Third Sunday In Lent (B) 2019

+ In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti + Amen.

Text: Luke 13:5
Theme: ‘Repent, or…”

Dear friends in Christ Jesus,

The call to repentance can’t be reinterpreted to mean something else. Jesus commands those trying to sus out the reason why terrible misfortune had happened to others to worry about themselves and repent. Anyone could face mortality at any time. Jesus would have known, of course, that their queries were particularly tendentious. That is, they were intending to promote their particular point of view. They were loaded questions. In this instance, they were casting the Galileans and the victims of the Siloam tower fall in a negative light. Frequently, efforts at casting others in a bad light are intended to lessen the shadow cast over one’s self. Few indeed, are those of us who have not been both perpetrators and victims of this activity!

Our Lord could hardly speak more forthrightly on this subject than He does today. “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans…I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”1 Do people today need to be called to repentance? Without question? So many live with a false sense of security, not believing sin separates us from God. When sin is acknowledged, often it’s in comparison with the transgressions of others. But Jesus wasn’t drawn into the temptation of quantifying guilt today. God does not show favoritism. We are all in the same boat. Do tragedies like the one that recently happened in New Zealand mean that God has gone to sleep or become apathetic? Do they mean our conception of God is all wrong? Or might they mean that our understanding of the fallenness of humanity is entirely inadequate?

In the Scriptures God speaks two very different kinds of messages to us. Still, they have the same purpose: To secure our holiness. When God makes commands, issues warnings, or threatens punishment God is speaking the law to us. The law is summarized and codified in the Ten Commandments. People can understand the function of God’s law intuitively. It is ‘natural’ to us. Yes, we need to be instructed as to its detail- what is and what isn’t in accordance with God’s will. But we can comprehend without the aid of the Holy Spirit the purpose of the law. The functioning conscience is evidence of innate understanding of the law.

Comprehension of the law’s function, however, does not mean people value what it seeks to achieve. The problems people have in interacting with God’s law basically fall into three categories. Firstly; ignorance. If people don’t know what God’s will, is they won’t know whether or not they are following it. Secondly; defiance. People, to varying degrees, don’t care what God’s law says and don’t believe they are subject to it. They do not believe they will fall under the law’s penalty here in time, or at the final judgment. Thirdly; arrogance. People think they are sufficiently pious, sufficiently adept at keeping the law, and therefore do not need to fear condemnation.

Of course, all of these situations involve a sinful attitude towards God’s will which He will not leave unresolved. In spite of God’s threat, repentance isn’t taken very seriously in society today. But the solution to the decline in Christianity is not to simply preach more law and less gospel. Christians too struggle with God’s law and we often vacillate between apathy, denial, and arrogance depending on the circumstances. The law does express God’s will. It is His holy word and truth. The law demands that we be holy.

The gospel is a different matter entirely. When God speaks graciously to us, promises that He Himself will make atonement for our sins, and loves us with a passion beyond anything we can fathom, He is speaking the gospel to us. The function of the gospel is not only counterintuitive, it is unintelligible to human logic. From human perspective it seems too good to be true. Intuitively, we think there are finally no free lunches. In the human realm this is the fact, even when we’re not privity to all the factors in play. Somebody pays.

It’s different with the gospel. Yes, the narrative of the gospel can be easily understood, that is, the events of Jesus’ life, His incarnation, passion, death, resurrection, ascension and the meaning attributed to them- these can be grasped by logic. A Bible verse such as “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”2 can also be cognitively understood. Jesus pays the bill. But true appreciation of the gospel requires the Holy Spirit. It requires faith, something only the Holy Spirit can give. The gospel makes no demands and places no burdens on us. It only frees us. It fills us with joy.

The gospel is not ‘neutral’ information. The gospel is the incomparably good news that God is for us in Christ. He will bear the burden of atoning for sin. Separation from God’s presence is averted for believers because Christ hung upon the cross and cried out “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”3 The gospel is never something we have to do or ever could do. We only receive, we are beneficiaries of all of the Father’s blessings through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. We are passive receivers, becoming so in baptism. It’s always been that way with God’s people, as the apostle says today about the Israelites’ rescue from slavery, “They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.”4

Remember what Isaiah says today, “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.”5 God speaks paradoxically to highlight His point. He invites us to buy without money and without cost. He intends to give us His blessings for free. The prophet’s words are a pure expression of the gospel. When we receive Christ’s body and blood, we are having our spiritual hunger and thirst quenched at no cost to us.

The proper proclamation of Christian truth always involves a balanced preaching of law and gospel. The law without the gospel leads to legalism, resulting finally in self-righteousness or despair. The gospel without the law leads to license, resulting finally in a state of lawlessness. If people don’t want to live in this good news and share it, then we might validly question whether they truly believe it. That’s the case today as Christianity in the West becomes more and more anemic. But Christ is the head of His church and the Spirit is not on holidays.

In this season of Lent, our focus is drawn back to the central mystery of the faith. God’s word of law and gospel, His threats and His promises find their culmination in the death and resurrection of Jesus. The cross stands there as the monolithic scandal unassailable by all human fury. The scandal it represents cannot be domesticated. The horror it displays cannot be mitigated. It simultaneously crushes your self-righteousness, obliterating even the faintest hope of claiming merit before the Almighty, while also quenching the divine wrath against your sinfulness. The Christ who lives in glory is the one who died in sacrifice. Repentance is a gift of the Spirit and we pray we are gifted with it with gentleness and integrity. Amen.

+ In nomine Jesu +

Third Sunday In Lent
24 March 2019
Reverend Darrin L. Kohrt
1 Luke 13:2-3
2 Romans 4:25
3 Matthew 27:46
4 1 Corinthians 10:2-4
5 Isaiah 55:1