THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER SERMON May 8, 2011
When I say to someone that the bible has two parts, most people will nod their head. But they will almost certainly think that the parts I am referring to are the “Old Testament” and the “New Testament”.
But when a Lutheran says the Bible has two parts, we are referring to a way of interpreting scripture, We divide passages of the Bible as either Law or Gospel.
The first lesson today is a good example of how we can distinguish between Law and Gospel because it contains both.
Let’s take a look at Acts 2:36-41
Peter, shortly after Pentecost, speaking to the strangers gathered around him and the other disciples, accuses them all of complicity in a murder. Specifically he says:
God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
Imagine the audacity of that statement. . It would be equivalent to today someone accusing you of being involved in a terrorist attack
This would not be a recommended way to win people to Christ today, and more likely it would get people to throw things at you.
This is the Law part of the Bible
O and by the way, Happy Mother’s Day.!
Why must we have a Mother’s Day?
How could we be so thoughtless and unappreciative of our mothers, the one that bore us, and gave us life, that we would have to set aside a certain day to remember them?
Shouldn’t we honor and praise God for our mother’s each and every day of our lives. That is what the Fourth Commandment demands of us; that we honor our Father and our Mother each and every day. Instead, we make it easy on ourselves, and think that we can give our mother’s a couple of hours on the first Sunday of May, and think that is enough!.
What I have just done is the same thing that Peter did with his words to the crowd. His words came from the holy Spirit and were done to elicit a particular response from the people in the crowd. His words and mine, were designed to “cut to the heart”.
That is what the Law does.
What does this mean, being cut to the heart. Today we would say that the Law convicts us. Here is the way that Rev. Adrian Dieleman explains it.
To say or do something with conviction does not mean you say or do it because you know it is the right thing to do. To say or do something with conviction is to say or do it because you are aware of your own sin.
“When you are cut to the heart, you find God to be so pure and holy and glorious that His presence terrifies you. When you are cut to the heart, you are overwhelmed by your sense of sin and shame and guilt. When you are cut to the heart, God and hell become overpowering realities. When you are cut to the heart, you don't want God to be close but you don't want Him to be far away either; His presence scares you but His absence scares you even more. You feel repelled – because of the darkness of your sin. And, you feel attracted – because He is the light. Like the Pentecost crowd, you may not know where to turn or what to do.”
And that is where Peter revealed to them the other part of the Bible, the Gospel, the good news, the Kerygma. What must you do. Repent and be baptized, because God has forgiven you your complicity in Christ’s death. God has forgiven you all your sins.- for Christ’s sake!.
Now, not everyone who hears that they are complicit in the death of Jesus will respond in the same way Acts 5:33 But they, when they heard this, were cut to the heart, and determined to kill them.
When a murderer is exposed, he may either confess it, deny it or justify it.. This week we found out about the death of Osama Ben Laden. He was a murderer who justified his murder of others. For most of us, the news of his death made it a day for some celebration.
This was a man who not only is responsible for the death’s of thousands of people, but also for a lot of troublesome changes and expense in our government and our lives. And I confess that I too felt some satisfaction in knowing he is dead.
Yet, Jesus tells us to pray for our enemies? We must remember that Jesus died for the sins of all, including Ben Laden. And we should feel sorrow that Ben Laden did not repent his sins, and is lost. And if we cannot do that, it is a sign that we too need to repent of our sin, that we would rejoice in any persons death and damnation is a sign of our own sinfulness.
Even our very reasonable ,human desire to take joy in the death of a mass murderer is a sin. But again, if we are convicted of sin, and our response is repentance, we are then ready to receive the good news. God forgives us our weaknesses and failures. That promise is for us who are, in Peter’s phrase, a long way off, in both time and space.
But if we compare ourselves to Ben Laden or Hitler to minimize our sinfulness, we deceive ourselves. Each sin, no matter how apparently innocuous or harmless, adds to the pain Christ suffered on the cross., But we can take comfort in this, because that is the path to forgiveness.
On the cross, Jesus did not ask his Father to forgive everyone, He asked God the Father to forgive those involved in his crucifixion.
As Lutherans, we acknowledge, like Luther himself, that the Jews alone were not responsible for Christ’s crucifixion. Each sin of ours is another cut or bruise unto the body of Jesus. We are accessories to his murder. We have blood on our hands. But God has forgiven us. In the waters of baptism, the tell-tale blood on our hands is washed away and we are made pure and clean again.
“And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:7). Amen.
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