Light of Truth – 15 March 2015 – Fourth Sunday in Lent

How hard it is to preach the gospel! Judith Simonson, in Homily Service in 2006 wrote about the proclamation of good news requiring that the preacher know how to distinguish between law and gospel. The preacher, then, does not leave people thinking that the gospel is something we achieve. It is well to think of this every Sunday.

Paul Scott Wilson (The Practice of Preaching) distinguishes in this way: law is what human life is, what we do, and what we are to do. Law is about human action. In contrast, gospel is what God is doing. This can be a handy check for preachers.

Almost nothing makes me a stronger believer in the doctrine of original sin than the difficulty we have in keeping the message of the Gospel clear. There is something, apparently, in the human makeup that prompts the clergy and laity alike to confuse law and Gospel and use them interchangeably. Perhaps the good news does not seem so good to those who really do want to earn the love of God.

. . . I heard it again the other day in one of our churches. I was listening to a well-delivered sermon, but beginning to wonder if it were not more of a lecture than a sermon. The preacher apparently also felt some need to inject a bit of the “Gospel,” proclaimed that intention, and proceeded to quote the lines from Matthew 22:37–39, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. . . You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Ignoring the next verse, which speaks of “these two commandments,” we were urged to conduct ourselves as befits Christian people because that was the “Gospel” Jesus proclaimed.

I behaved myself and did not rise up to challenge the preacher (although I shall find a way to do it privately). . . because this is where our message gets so muddled and loses its power.

. . .  Jesus understood the law in a radical way. He was forever pointing out that the letter of the law was one thing, but that the children of God were called to express the intent of the law— the good of the other. When he challenged the rich young man with that radical expectation, his disciples questioned him and were told that, of course, it was impossible to satisfy the law from a human point of view; that it took God’s intervention.

It is that intervention, in the person of Jesus himself, the embodiment of God’s grace, that constitutes the Gospel.  

. . . Here we have come full circle from Ash Wednesday when we were urged not to display our piety in public. . .  to fast and pray privately. Now we hear words about light and darkness and are urged to come into the light. – Judith E. Simonson

The images of death and of healing in the Gospel of John and in Numbers turn us toward honesty about our struggles and the fact that looking at the causes can begin the healing.

John 3:14-21

Just as Moses turned the serpent, something that was originally the cause of suffering, into a means of saving lives, the gospel writers made the cross, originally a symbol of shame and suffering, into a symbol of eternal life. – Jonathan Lawrence

Numbers 21:4-9

[T]he concept [here] is of God providing a way to rescue the people from the situation they found themselves in due to their sin, offering a logical parallel for the gospel of John. – Jonathan Lawrence

Ephesians 2:1-10

Writing to the church in Ephesus, Paul clearly reiterates the difference between law and gospel:  “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” (vs. 9)

Jonathan D. Lawrence, an American Baptist Church ordained minister, teaches Religious Studies and Theology at Canisius College, Buffalo, New York.

Judith Simonson is an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Homily Service 39, no. 4 (2006): 44-52.

Being Shaped Anew – 30 November 2014 – First Sunday of Advent

The words of the commentator to Homily Service for this Sunday in 2008 are true still today. All the problems of today are the same problems. They will persist… and so will the light that we celebrate coming into the world.

Before we can see the light, we have to know the darkness.

The lessons for this day are not uplifting, nor particularly hopeful. They include community laments, acknowledgments of sin, realities of destruction, despair, and chaos, as well as a sense of God's abandonment. But these are precisely the realities (albeit in a different context) that people sitting in the pews face today, as they grapple with the housing crisis, an anemic economy, a high unemployment rate, an exploding population that the earth cannot sustain, global warming, a painful war, and uncertainties over the future. Perhaps the proclamation and recognition that God's people have repeatedly grappled with similar realities in ages past, and have emerged with their faith not only intact but strengthened, will lay the groundwork for an Advent season based in faith and hope, with the expectation that regardless of what the future brings, God is indeed with us.  . . .

            – Carol J. Noren

So why does Advent begin in the realm of the Prince of Darkness when we are eager to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Light? Why do we drape our sanctuaries with the heavy purple of twilight rather than the illuminating rose of dawn? Why do we recount prophecies of the end of the world when we want to hear tidings of the beginning of a new creation? Why do we light only one candle when we want to ignite the full brilliance of God's glory?

It is a good question. So is this: Why do we continue to dwell in the darkness of injustice and oppression when God has already shown us justice and mercy in Christ? Why do we continue to engage in the darkness of armed conflict when the Prince of Peace has already walked among us? Why do we continue to pursue the darkness of greed and power when Christ came among us as a servant and called us to lives of service? Why do we continue to embrace the darkness of pride and selfishness . . . to rest in the darkness of satisfaction when there are others around us who still struggle under a blanket of poverty? . . .

The Good News of Advent is that our darkness is not complete nor is it final, for the Light of God dwelt among us, and still does, and will again. The Good News of Advent is that even in the utter darkness of our human sinfulness, we can light a single candle and God is here.

We begin in darkness because we are people. We do not remain in darkness because we are God's people. We begin in darkness, for we are human beings. We need not curse the darkness, for we know how to light a candle. It is an Advent candle.

            – John H. Barden

The prophet Isaiah (64:1-9) reminds YHWH “we are the clay, and you are our potter…” Advent gives us space and time to be re-made by the potter as we bump up against the cheerful demands of the season while hearing the laments of the scriptures.

The season calls us to rest before we find ourselves agog with frenzy. We sing the hymns that speak of quiet, hear the words of warning, gather with the people of God, and notice the light of only one candle… then two… and three... until there are four. This is the gift of a waiting time not a busy time.

While we are being moulded into the potter’s vision, Mark’s Gospel (13:24-37) tells us that we are to Keep Awake… Watch Out… Be Prepared… because there is a birth coming that is greater than all births, and this one will change the cosmos. You don’t want to miss it.

And none of us needs to miss it because the epistle of 1 Corinthians 1:3-9 assures the church that we are “not lacking in any spiritual gift” as we wait “for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

It is God who strengthens us.

Carol J. Noren is a Methodist who has served congregations in Minnesota.

John H. Barden is a Presbyterian pastor serving as Vice President for Admissions at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Texas. 

Homily Service 42, no. 1 (20 Oct 2008): 4-15.