Sermon for Sunday March 18th
2012 – EVENSONG
Exodus 6:2-13
Romans 5:1-11
Hope
and Life
“I am the Lord,
and I will free you from the burdens of the Egyptians and deliver you from
slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty
acts of judgement. I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. You
shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has freed you
from the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore
to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; I will give it to you for a possession. I
am the Lord.” ’ Moses told
this to the Israelites; but they would not listen to Moses, because of their
broken spirit and their cruel slavery.”
My subject this evening is Christian Hope
and the Christian Life. But we have to begin I think with this reading from
Exodus. God has heard the cry of the Israelites in their harsh oppression and
remembering his Covenant, his unbreakable Oath – Whilst we think of Love as the
Pre-eminent aspect of God, the Scriptures speak more of his Faithfulness. God
is Faithful, for as St Paul says, he cannot deny himself. To be faithless is to
deny your very being. – and so God in his Covenant faithfulness has decided to
rescue His people from Egypt. To claim them for himself.
And he tells Moses to go and tell the
people, “but they would not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and
their cruel slavery.” They were so
down they did not even have the energy to look up – they had nothing to hang
their hope on. How on Earth could this be so . . . and to be frank who can
blame them. For when We speak of hope, we have something similar in mind. I
hope something will come along – I hope the weather will be better tomorrow – I
hope aunty Jean will get well soon. But if we ask Why do you hope these things,
then we have to say - nothing
really, I just hope they are true. And this is as far as it probably could be
all that the Israelites could mean by hope also – a vague wish, based on?? Well
based on very little, indeed based on the words of a strange God whom they did
not know – Remember when they Cried out in their oppression, they didn’t cry
out to God, they just Cried out! Based on the words of a strange God through
the mouth of one of their own who had grown up in the Egyptian court and then
got them all into trouble by killing an Egyptian and trying to set himself up
as some kind of saviour and then fleeing who knew where to suddenly arrive back
and say “God has been speaking to me’ and all the while they have been whipped
and driven and tormented and forced to make bricks without straw. A labour camp
of the worst sort, in all but name a Death Camp. Humanly speaking their
situation in hopeless. I doubt any one of them listened to Moses, and they
certainly didn’t pay any attention. Imagine being Moses and having to declare
it!
No they didn’t even have the vague wish
kind of hope for there was Nothing to base it on . . . which brings us to
Christian Hope and one of the most densely argued sections of St Paul’s densely
argued letter to the Romans. This reading is So significant that it is
unusually read here at Evensong as Well as being part of the three year
lectionary cycle – but it is not easy. I remember early in my years as Vicar in
Hellifield. There was a diminutive lady in the congregation, a widow by the
name of Barbara. And She was on the rota for readers and had this passage to
read. And she came to me afterwards and said – I haven’t a clue what any of
that meant! And it was at once highly understandable, and at the other deeply regrettable,
for in some sense if we don’t get what this is about, we really don’t
understand Christian faith or life at all.
Paul here in these carefully worded 11
verses in a very real sense tells us the Good News. He speaks of the past and
the future and their concrete relationship to the present. It is masterful
theology. And it reveals a staggering Hope about which there is Nothing Vague –
and the Extraordinary nature of the Christian Life. So if you will permit me –
I shall take a few minutes now to unpack what he says.
Verse 1 (Yes I am Really going to unpack
this :) ) Therefore since we ARE justified
by faith – ‘Therefore’ reminds us that we are in Chapter 5 and Paul has spent
much of the preceding 2 chapters proving that if we put our Trust in God, abandoning trust in anything or anyone else, then That is sufficient to put us right with
Him – we are Justified by Faith, by placing our trust in him.
Well what is the consequence of doing that?
When we let go of everything else and trust God instead, ‘we have Peace with
God through our Lord Jesus Christ’. Christ in his death and resurrection has
brought us access into a profound relationship with God – he has opened the
door to the Rich Life of God and we enter into that Peace through Faith - this Grace in which we now stand Vs 2
– And then Paul makes an Extraordinary claim and it is the first mention of
that word Hope –at Peace with God, Made right with Him, Standing in
Grace, we boast in our Hope of sharing in the
glory of God!! We boast in our Hope of Sharing in God’s Very Life!! This is
Extraordinary and we may well say hope in what?? Paul, you have gone to far!!
But Notice that this is not a baseless hope – this is no vague wish, for
Already God has acted – Our position for hope is Not like that of the Israelites
in Egypt who are addressed before God rescues
them. No! It is based on what God has Already done. The security of hope is the
Past even of the death and resurrection of Jesus. So our Hope, our Faith has a
Solid Past foundation upon which we base our Future Hope. And because it is
Such a Breathtaking foundation, it gives rise to a similarly breathtaking Hope.
That we might share in the glory of God.
Then Paul changes gear – having given the
foundation for the Future hope – he then speaks of how we Now enter into that
Hope.. throughout Lent I have been teaching on the Christian Practices – if you
like the Essence of the Christian Life an I have said over and over again, that
that is no more or less than entering into the very Life of God. We enact His
Generosity, His Love, His forgiveness, His Hospitality, His Life. (details on
my website). In other words that we begin to live the future reality in the
present, based on the firm foundation of the past.
And here we see how clearly we enter the
life of God – for we boast in our sufferings – for the Life of God is Suffering
in the World, we can only walk in this Life following our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ – there is no other way. If we Trust in God, we Will find
ourselves in conflict with All that is not God, BUT say Paul, Suffering
produces Endurance – endurance character and character Hope. As I have been
teaching these past few weeks, if we push past that first terrible resistance
to Living out the life of God, we discover the Life of God available to us. The
more we enter in the more we know of this Life of God in us and So we Grow in
that life, Suffering, Endurance (God Endures though all the mountains are worn
away, He endures), Character (the fullness of God’s being more and more
revealed as we walk in this path, Growing in Love and Generosity and
Forgiveness) and finally - there
is is again Hope. We Work from Hope founded upon the work of Christ – to Hope
–the End is found in the beginning. You see we begin with this seed of Hope –
given to us through the death and resurrection of Jesus, and Like All Life –
it produces of its Own – we Grow in Hope.
And now Paul moves again, from the future
Hope to its breaking into the present. ‘Verse 5’ ‘And Hope does not disappoint
us because God’s Love has been poured into our hearts through the holy spirit
that has been given us.
This is SO important. The Holy Spirit – the
very Life of God is given to us. His Love poured into our hearts and Out into
the world. In other words, this future hope - this scandalous Hope that we will share in the Glory of
God – share in His Life is found Present Expression as he shares his life
with us here and Now.
The Hope is based on the Past work of
Christ – it has a firm foundation – as we step out in faith, through suffering,
endurance and character grow which produce More Hope and that Hope is already
Now partially realized. So our hope is not only now based on what God has done
pouring his life out for us Christ in the past but also his continual pouring
out of his life for us in our present experience. We are Tasting the future.
The Christian Life is Based on the past,
future directed and Present enacted – our Vocation, our Call it to live out the
Life of the future, Here and Now. This is the Fruit of Faith.
So Paul makes this stunning and Wonder Full
case for a Concrete Hope, Based Solidly on the Past work of Christ – Growing as
we enter into the Life of God ourselves as Christ’s disciples – Given Present
re-inforcement by God Living in us now by His Spirit.
And then he leads us in a meditation of the
wellspring of all of this. Bringing us back again to the work of Christ on the
Cross, this Spring of Life. Paul wants us to Wonder more and More. If you are
at all unsure of God’s Love for you –meditate on this. For it was while we were
still weak, Then at the Best time Christ died for the ungodly (Not the immoral,
by the way, not the moral, no he died for those who were without God – God’s
Love does not depend on us except in that we are far from him – that is the basis
of His love – his love is poured out for those who do not believe – those like
the Israelites who did not, who could not listen, because of their broken
Spirit, and their cruel slavery. God proves his love for us that while we were
yet sinners – while we had nothing in us to commend ourselves, like the utterly
unlovely, That is the measure of God’s Love. Like the Father loving the
Prodigal, Wasting his love on the wastrel. God’s Love is breathtaking for it
Loves where NONE is shown in return. THAT is why we may have So much confidence
in the Love of God precisely because it does NOT depend in anyway upon us..
And How Much that One fact can transform
our Christian Life – that God’s Love is shown to us for no reason that we have
anything to do with except our mere existence. Truly Unconditional Love. And So
Paul now works up to his final Crescendo. Having Spoken of the past work being
the Sure ground of our faith, he has Shown Just how wonderful that work is – if
the death of Christ for you is Not enough – just consider that it is Utterly
Gratuitous!! ‘Much more surely then’ he goes on, Much more surely that we have
been put right by his blood , shall we be saved from the wrath of God’ Because
this whole Salvation is an act of Gratuitous Love. There is NO basis for Fear.
For if while we were yet his enemies Christ
died for us – the wrath of God is shown to his enemies, YET he takes the wrath
upon himself, absorbing in himself for the sake of Love – If God makes his
enemies his children through the death of Jesus, HOW much more surely will we
be Saved by His Life.
In other words, Having started out on this
journey into the life of God, we discover we are given his Life that we might
more fully live the Salvation Life – which is of course the Life of Christ and
so we rejoice, boast, glory in God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Karl Barth in his magisterial commentary on
the Epistle to the Romans puts it like this ‘When once again people have God’
No longer without God and without Hope ‘they have all the fullness of life and
its blessedness’ . . . because through the death of Christ, they are now filled
with the future of God’
This is our Hope, This is our Life. The
Past work of Christ – the present Life of God poured into us by the Holy Spirit
as we live both In and towards the Glorious future of God.
Amen
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