Sermon June 1, 2008

Pentecost 3 (Proper 4)

Deuteronomy 11 18-21, 26-28, Psalm 31: 1-5, 19-24, Romans 1:16-17; 3:22b-31, Matthew 7: 21-29

The readings today provide us with an interesting, consecutive story - the central story of our faith, in fact - told in 3 sermons.

I remember someone once asking me a question about preaching. "What would you say in your sermon", they asked, "if you knew it was the last one you would ever preach?"

Now there's a challenge! What lies at the heart of our lives - what's central - what would any of us want to share with those we love if we knew it was the last chance we would have to speak with them?

That's the context of the first lesson, from the Hebrew Scriptures. Here, in the last book of the Torah - Deuteronomy - Moses is preaching his last sermon. The Israelites stand poised to enter the Promised Land but Moses, you'll recall, has been told by God that he won't be able to enter in with them. This is his "Last Goodbye".

It must have been a very solemn occasion - certainly for Moses, but probably for all who heard him too - they all knew he wasn't going with them.

Moses talks of the Israelites' core identity and mission - that they must continue to live into their identity as followers of Yahweh, who brought them out of bondage and into freedom. Their future blessedness would be dependent on their faithfulness to God and the ways God prescribed for them.

Moses was challenging the Israelites.

And Moses challenges us, too: do we know our own faith tradition's core values? Do we have its inner vision inscribed on our hearts as well as on our doorposts - inscribed internally and externally?

For the Israelites, the consequences of following or not following the ways of Yahweh were stark: follow and you will be blessed. Don't follow and you will be cursed. Or, to put it more bluntly, "if you fail you die."

Paul's letter to the Roman Church is the greatest piece of writing he ever produced - and that's saying something! It was his collected wisdom about The Way, about following Jesus. It was his attempt to convince the Roman community to follow Jesus, his master-work. In a sense, therefore, what Paul says in Romans is coming from the same place as Moses' last sermon to the Israelites.

And what Paul says is different than what Moses says. "We have", Paul says, "all fallen short of the glory of God" - we are all sinners.

He's contradicting Moses! It isn't a question of whether or not we can succeed at following God and God's ways - we can't succeed - on our own! In fact, because of the Sin of the First Adam, Paul says, we're incapable of doing so, incapable of being perfect. WE...WILL...FAIL!!

But God has intervened, God has given us a priceless gift - his son. It is through that gift of grace that we are, says Paul, "justified" before God - made righteous.

So whereas Moses says, essentially, "If you fail you die", Paul says "You have failed but you will not die, because of God's grace."

All of which brings us to today's gospel! Once again this is a summation of all that has gone before. This passage is the closing piece of the so-called "Sermon on the Mount" - a "sermon" Matthew constructed by bringing together disparate parables, stories, teachings from Jesus' teaching and putting them in one place. This passage is, in the mind of some biblical commentators, the key to the entire gospel of Matthew.

What it comes down to is this: "Did you love, really love your neighbor?" "How did you treat other people?" "Did you feed the hungry, give clothes to the naked, visit those in prison?"

There are plenty of folk, Jesus tells his listeners who are willing to proclaim outwardly that they are true believers, that they are faithful followers. But once the veneer of faith is stripped away the reality is quite different.

Matthew's Jesus is saying, in essence, "we have all failed but not all of us are willing to admit it"! It's a truism that those who believe in something are much more willing to act on its behalf than those who simply mouth platitudes but have no real commitment. As Pascal said: "The world is divided between sinners who believe themselves to be saints and saints who know themselves to be sinners."

They condemn themselves, Jesus tells his listeners, by continuing to live a lie. Those are the people who've built their houses on sand.

Now there are some of us here today who know exactly what happens when a house is built on, or too close, to unstable soil. Just ask anyone who has a house up high on cliffs above the beaches of the western side of this island! Ask Cleveland and Jan, ask Fletcher and Elizabeth. If you get too close then one day you open your back door to a 100 foot drop!

In the end it's about honesty to ourselves, and living into the core values of our faith.

And the key to all this is, in the end, ourselves.

• Are we willing to accept - embrace, even - Moses vision of living into the core vision of our faith?
• Are we willing to accept - embrace, even - Paul's vision of human failure and the need for repentance?
• Are we willing to accept - embrace, even - Jesus' call to live out our faith in concrete action on behalf of the poor and lost, the lonely and abandoned, the hungry and the naked?

We have the whole of this season after Pentecost to seek answers to those questions! Amen.