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Sermon for 1st
Sunday In Lent Yr C 29/02/2004 Based on Rom 10:8b-13 By Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson, Pastor of Grace Lutheran
Church, & Chaplain of the Good
Samaritan Society’s South Ridge Village, Medicine
Hat, Alberta We
have all, at one time or another, probably heard or even spoken ourselves,
the old adage: "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names and
words can never hurt me." In real life however, this popular expression
has repeatedly been proven false. The apostle Paul, in today’s second
lesson, tells us that the spoken word is very powerful. According to
Paul, the preached word gives us faith to believe and confess Jesus is
Lord. Or put another way, for Paul preaching God’s Word gives birth to
faith, which makes it possible for us to confess that Jesus is Lord. One
of the central themes running through nearly every letter of Paul is the
absolute necessity of God’s preached word. Preaching for Paul is one of the
most important gifts of the Church. For Paul, preaching is not only
equated with faith, it is also the means by which God works salvation.
That is why the preached word is very powerful and must never be
underestimated or ignored. Unfortunately
people do underestimate and ignore the power of the preached word. Lay
people who hear the preached word regularly may come to view preaching as so
ordinary that they fail to realize the extraordinary power of preaching. Most
of us don’t make much out of taking a glass of water to drink almost any time
we want to. But if we were stranded out in a desert with only
one quart of water; we would be very quick to realize how important that
water was for us. Pastors
who preach the word also may fail to realize the extraordinary power of
preaching. Seeds of doubt may try to convince them that preaching is a
useless task, which produces no tangible results. They may be left with the
false impression that the preached word is not being heard and has little or
no influence upon people’s lives. However, both lay people and pastors need to
be reminded that God has chosen the very ordinary means of preaching to
work in a very extraordinary, powerful way. In speaking the preached word
through a common, ordinary human being, God gives and strengthens faith and
works salvation--that is truly a miracle! Someone has said, "There are two kinds of
preachers--those who have to say something, and those who have something to
say!" The call to be God’s witnesses is grounded in the gift of
something significant to say. That something centers in the life-giving
gospel of God’s grace revealed and promised in Jesus Christ. We preachers are
in the business of proclaiming a message creative of the full and abundant
Life Christ came to give! 1 Martin
Luther was keenly aware of this very important point--he had an extremely
high, sacramental-like view of the preached word. That is why in his
explanation to the Third Commandment: (for us Lutherans who order the
commandments differently than others) Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it
holy, he has this to say in The Small Catechism: "We are to fear
and love God so that we do not neglect his Word and the preaching
of it, but regard it as holy and gladly hear and learn it." According
to Paul, HEARING the preached word not only helps us to believe and
have faith; it also leads us to CONFESS our faith that JESUS IS
LORD. This confession that Jesus is Lord is very likely the earliest
creedal statement of the Christian Church. The Greek word for Lord is KURIOS. This word has
four stages of meaning. First, it is the normal title of respect like the
English sir or German herr. Second, it is the normal title of
the Roman Emperors. Third, it is the normal title of the Greek gods, prefaced
before the god’s name. Kurios Serapis is Lord Serapis. Fourth, in the Greek
translation of the Hebrew scriptures it is the regular translation of the
divine name, YHWH. When the early Christians called Jesus KURIOS they
were ranking him with the Emperor and with God; they were giving Jesus the
supreme place in their lives; they were pledging Jesus implicit obedience and
reverent worship over and above everyone else. 2 Loyalty
to Jesus and his authority took precedent over loyalty and authority toward
anyone else. This early Christian confession was viewed by the Roman
authorities as treasonous and thus led many Christians to death by martyrdom.
In almost every century of the Church’s history,
Christians have boldly confessed their faith. In his book The Great
Invitation, Emil Brunner tells about a Russian Easter service held near
Odessa in 1940. A crowd of 40,000 Christians gathered for worship, but
instead they were harassed by communist agitators and forced to listen to
four hours of atheistic propaganda. Finally one member of the congregation
begged to say four words to the assembled group and was granted that
privilege. He stood before them and gave the traditional Russian Easter
greeting: "Brothers and sisters, Christ is risen." From 40,000
mouths came the reply, "He is risen indeed." 3 This
story reveals the necessity and power of confessing Christ, which results in
salvation. The ideology of atheistic communism threatened to replace these
Christians’ belief in Jesus as Lord. Whatever and whoever threatens to
destroy or pervert the Christian loyalty to Jesus as Lord must be resisted with
this very confession. Otherwise Christians may very well be in danger of
losing their faith in Christ altogether. By confessing Christ, these Russian
Christians were saying to the communist propaganda agitators that their
greatest loyalty and highest authority was to Jesus Christ--he is more
powerful than anything or anyone. Jesus Christ is Lord, not communism (or for
that matter capitalism!) or any other ideology, power or authority. What
about us? How often do we confess the Christian faith with our mouths when we
are required to compromise or even give up our faith in Jesus as Lord? Would
we--given the circumstances--be willing to die if that were necessary for
confessing that Jesus is Lord? Even today this is still happening in some
countries which are hostile to the Christian faith. May
God help us to gladly come to hear the preached word; that we may be blessed
with a deeper, more vibrant faith to confess the Lordship of Jesus Christ
over us and all creation. Amen. 1 From a quote by Lowell Erdahl, in John S. McClure,
editor, Best Advice For Preaching (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998),
p. 6. 2 Cited from: Wm. Barclay, The Letter to the
Romans (Burlington, ON: G.R. Welch Co., Ltd., 1975), p. 139. 3 Cited from: W.A. Poovey, The Days Before Easter
(Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1977), p. 48. |
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