Who Deserves Mercy?

 

Text: Luke 15:1-10

Focus: mercy

Function: to help people see how everyone deserves a chance at mercy

¹Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. ²And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

³So he told them this parable: ⁴“Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? ⁵And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. ⁶And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep.’ ⁷Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

⁸“Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? ⁹And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ ¹⁰Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

When I was in Bible College, every year they choose a “year verse” for us to focus on. The verse for my Junior year was Micah 6:8: “He has shown you O man, what is good and what the Lord desires of you: Do justice, Love Mercy and walk humbly with your God.”

It is three simple commands, Two of them are of the heart and conscience and the third is the action verb, to do.

By “of the heart and conscience” I mean that it is a decision, or perhaps a fruit of the Holy Spirit, to love mercy and to walk humbly with God.

Loving mercy is what we are going to talk about this morning.

I Wish the bible had a better description of what it mean when the text says that Jesus received the sinners and tax collectors. Tax collectors we understand. They were people who 1, collaborated with the occupying forces and 2, profited off of that collaboration to the extent that it drove the population into abject poverty.

It was perceived by many that they were the reason for the problem and people hated them because they were part of the system that exploited them.

And Jesus welcomed people who exploit others into His presence.

The other group was sinners. And that is what I mean by I wish the Bible explained it better. What, exactly, is a sinner? It is the opposite of a righteous person, and a righteous person is a just person.

When I was raised, it was simple, but wrong. It was anyone who smoked, cussed, danced or drank alcohol. I suppose they had to make it simple for my mind, but the lasting impression was the wrong one. I understand the alcohol part since my mother’s family were all alcoholics. It represented an evil in our family that was a real source of bondage. Two of my uncles died from alcohol poisoning.

But the scripture is clear, the Holy Spirit gives us self control and Jesus turned the water into wine for His first miracle. Religion forbade us the use of alcohol, but it was an overreaching of interpretation of scripture that caused it and it wasn’t true to God’s word.

It goes to show how religion gets in the way of doing the right thing. The religious people were offended by Jesus’ association with sinners and tax collectors.

I still didn’t answer the question as to what a sinner is. I believe it is a person who commits acts of evil by commission or omission that harms another human being. It can include violence against others, stealing, cheating, robbing, lying, jealousy, covetousness, and other similar acts.

They are, according to that verse that means so much to me, acts whereby we do not do justice to others. Doing Just things is the proof of our righteousness.

I am afraid that we came up with a short list, a false list of things that we called sin, like smokin, drinkin and cussin in order to obfuscate from the important issues.

For example, God wants us to deal with our own racist biases and I find it important for me to constantly examine my own prejudices.

I bought a car off the internet last week. I hope it shows up tomorrow. I bought it from a guy with a foreign name, Asif Nas, is his name and his accent is heavily middle eastern.

At one point, I accused him of lying to me, and I realize that I might not have given him the benefit of the doubt because of all the negative stereotyping of Middle Eastern men in our own TV programming. Racism is a way to motivate others ant it is a powerful and seductive tool if we let it. But as believers, we are called to love our neighbor as ourselves and weed it out.

Sin is not marrying the person that you love. I gave you a definition of what a sinner is which came from my limited experience and opinions. My definition of sin is as follows. Anything that keeps us from loving God our our neighbor as ourselves is sin to us. Sin is missing the mark of God’s loving standard for the world.

So, it has nothing to do with whom you marry. After all the emphasis of this passage is Jesus’ mercy toward people who were considered outcasts by the culture because of their sins.

Jesus showed mercy.

Did they change?

Well, He goes on the illustrate the importance of caring for people that otherwise are cast out of society by giving the parable of the lost sheep and the lost coin.

And at the end He says that there is much more rejoicing in heaven for the repentance of the one than of the 99 who were already practicing love for their neighbor.

We love God by loving our neighbor.

You remember the story of Zaccheus. We sang the song when I was a kid (SING PORTION).

It was fun, and sadly the song didn’t emphasize exactly what was going on. Again, they rejected Jesus for showing mercy toward sinners. But it was the showing of mercy that caused him to repent.

Zaccheus was short of stature, so he climbed the tree to see Jesus when Jesus was passing by. And Jesus stopped, noticed him, and invited Himself to dinner at Zaccheus’ house.

And Zaccheus was so overwhelmed that he gave half his money to the poor and paid back everyone he had defrauded.

The text doesn’t actually say that he was so overwhelmed by Jesus’ mercy that he changed his life, but that is what we surmise from this passage.

Be merciful toward others who are outcast, considered to be sinners and who seem to be less than what is acceptable by society.

Jesus loves them and our mercy toward them just might be the catalyst for them believing enough in the goodness of God that they too will give up their harmful practices, if they have them and follow the way of the Lord, the love for others as your own self.

I am not saying the poor and dispossessed are sinners. Most of them are hard working honest and decent folks who have had a series of bad luck that has brought them to this place.

The Bible commands us to care for them and tells us they are our responsibility.

According to Ezekiel 16:48-49, the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was lack of concern for the poor.

I believe that when the Bible condemns Sodomites, it is a reference to those who don’t obey the Lord by caring for the least of these.

I read these verses and see the mercy of Jesus and I realize that practicing the same mercy will reconcile others back to God.

Applying Principles of Love

 

Text: Philemon 8-21

Focus: Forgiveness

Function: to help people see how to lay down their privilege to love one another

⁸For this reason, though I am more than bold enough in Christ to command you to do the right thing, ⁹yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love—and I, Paul, do this as an old man and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus. ¹⁰I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment. ¹¹Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me. ¹²I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you. ¹³I wanted to keep him with me so that he might minister to me in your place during my imprisonment for the gospel, ¹⁴but I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your good deed might be voluntary and not something forced. ¹⁵Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back for the long term, ¹⁶no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother—especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.

¹⁷So if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. ¹⁸If he has wronged you in any way or owes you anything, charge that to me. ¹⁹I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand: I will repay it. I say nothing about your owing me even your own self. ²⁰Yes, brother, let me have this benefit from you in the Lord! Refresh my heart in Christ. ²¹Confident of your obedience, I am writing to you, knowing that you will do even more than I ask.

Let me just sum up what is happening in this letter. Paul is in prison and nobody fed prisoners. They were dependent on others to bring them food. Paul was a model prisoner and was granted some freedom. He had enough favor to have a person call on him regularly to help with his needs and that person was an escaped slave named Onesimus.

Previously Paul had introduced Philemon, the slave owner to Jesus Christ and he became a convert. And Paul tells him that he owes him his life for that. And now Paul is faced with the moral dilemma of what to do with this escaped slave. He wants to free him, but doesn’t have the authority.

This is a good story of what it meant to the early Church to flesh out the teachings of Jesus in the new Kingdom that Jesus came to establish.

The Bible, taken literally, can be used to justify about anything. During the years that America allowed the enslavement of what they called colored peoples, Slave owners justified their position of oppression sort of through scripture.

It isn’t that old of a history. My own mother, as she was grappling with what it meant to be anti-racist after being exposed to the meanness of Jim Crow laws while she was serving the Lord with my father at a Church in Tennessee had to overcome what she was taught in Sunday School in order to give black people the same love and affection that we give our fellow white folks.

She was taught that slavery was justified when Caan sinned by looking at Noah’s nakedness. They claimed that he was turned black and cursed by God. Of course, there is no mention of his skin changing color in the bible.

And it is important to remember that all of the stories of faith that we enjoy, the story of David and Goliath, the Story of Jesus and the Resurrection, the Story of Daniel and the Lions den, the Story of Moses and the 10 plagues all happened to people of color.

Mom was raised in a white supremacist Christian community.

She too, like the early church had to learn to overcome worldly notions like racism.

The church has continually had to examine itself in light of Jesus teaching and grow to include more and more people.

So, here we are the first century Church with fresh story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection compelling them to live a different way of life.

And although slavery was legal, the church is wrestling with the question of whether or not it is right.

Remember, the first thing the early church did in response to the command to care for the least of these in their midst was to start a commune where they all shared. The rich believed in the Kingdom of God and gave up their greed and the poor got a chance. Now we don’t know why the commune disbanded, but we do know that Jerusalem fell to the Romans and was destroyed in the next generation that saw Jesus’ resurrection.

And all of that goes to show that the Church took seriously the command of Jesus to care for the least of these. It did that by voluntary action until the Romans took over the Church benevolence program in the 3^rd Century.

And then, as now, Charity came under the purveyance of government in the form of taxes.

The early Church had a lot to wrestle with when it came to slavery.

Abraham was the great Patriarch of the faith and he is recorded as having 276 slaves and or servants at his disposal. A slave owner was a Patriarch of the faith and the early Church had to make sense of what it meant for there to be equality in the name of Jesus when some people were not permitted basic human rights because they were enslaved.

The Roman culture survived by slavery and the exploitation of the poor.

That was the very thing the Jesus preached against.

The Church knew that inherently, slavery was an abuse of the principle that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves.

But the call to action is voluntary and Paul has no legal authority to free this run away slave.

So he sends him back to his master appeal to his conscience to do the right thing and free the slave.

I like the way Paul ends the letter with the request to prepare a room for him to visit. In other words, Paul is going to check up on him and see if this person’s actions meet with their language. Does Philemon walk the walk or just talk the talk?

I titled the sermon, Applying the principles of love.

I want to remind everyone that God has given the Holy Spirit to everyone who believes in Jesus and the Spirit is there to lead us to love one another.

When Jesus was talking with an educated scholar and they were debating what the most important command of the entire Bible was, Jesus answered with two commands. Love God and Love your neighbor as yourself.

In Matthew 25, Jesus shows us that we love God by loving others. 1 John tells us that we can’t see God, but we can see others and we love God by loving others.

What am I saying?

The OT is full of commands that are derived from the principle that we are to love God and others. And all the Jews had to do in order to justify their greed was figure out ways to technically obey without actually obeying.

They came up with 13,000 laws to validate the 1,100 in the OT when they created the Talmud.

It is a beautiful work, but all of that showed us one thing. We can’t do it in our own power.

The Jews had a law that they were supposed to follow and instead they got greedy and selfish and refused to care for the least of these in their midst.

Jesus’ hope was that people would be filled with the Holy Spirit.

How does that happen?

We confess Jesus and we are filled with the Spirit. I am filled by the Spirit whenever we partake together in the bread and cup. Because in so doing, we are confessing Jesus as our way to love one another.

If You Want Revival

Text: Isaiah 58:9-14

Focus: renewal

Function: to help people see justice as a path to revival

⁹Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
    you shall cry for help, and he will say, “Here I am.”

If you remove the yoke from among you,
    the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,

¹⁰if you offer your food to the hungry
    and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
    and your gloom be like the noonday.
¹¹The Lord will guide you continually
    and satisfy your needs in parched places
    and make your bones strong,
and you shall be like a watered garden,
    like a spring of water
    whose waters never fail.
¹²Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
    you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
    the restorer of streets to live in.

¹³If you refrain from trampling the Sabbath,
    from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;
if you call the Sabbath a delight
    and the holy day of the Lord honorable;
if you honor it, not going your own ways,
    serving your own interests or pursuing your own affairs; ¹⁴then you shall take delight in the Lord,
    and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth;
I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob,
    for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

When I grew up, we lived our lives around the Church. There was Sunday School and then an hour and half worship service that consisted of singing and listening to a rather lengthy hell fire and brimstone sermon. It seemed to me that every single week, there was something that I needed to go forward for and confess.

I eventually gave up trying to please God with my own holiness and stopped listening to preachers of shame.

After Church, we spent the afternoon honoring the Sabbath, which meant that we weren’t allowed to play outside. Then we went to evening church where we had less singing and an even longer sermon.

Wednesday night came around, and we were back having a prayer meeting.

I love the zeal and dedication of that church, but we spent a lot of time there.

And that wasn’t all, it was a Missionary Church. That meant that twice a year, we held a one week meeting where a missionary, or several missionaries came in and told us of their work and asked us for money.

But the real time of dedication came at our yearly revival meeting. Those lasted for a week, unless the Spirit really got moving, and then we went on for another week or so. Those meetings happened every single night of the week, so we got home, quickly ate supper and dashed out every night for our revival meeting.

A couple of those revival meeting had a very strong influence on my life. I can say that I genuinely experienced the moving of the Holy Spirit as I felt touched and called by God to do even greater things than I do myself.

Of course, most of the time, it was a prayer for the power to live a holy life free from sin. The revivals were inspiring, but at times, they focused a little bit too much on avoiding sin instead of preaching the love of God.

But one revival really stood out in my mind. It happened when I was about 14 years old. It was called the revival of love.

It started when two pastors in a certain denomination were feuding and finally one of them decided to lay down his pride, forgive the other and he said a great out pouring of love flowed through him into his church and the other pastor’s church.

And, the scripture says that the moving of the Holy Spirit is like yeast in a loaf of bread. We can’t see it happening on a micro-biological level, but we can certainly see the affect as the bread dough rises and that sweet smell fills the air.

I remember studying the revival later, when I was in bible college, and I don’t remember what the feud was, that was not important. What was important to the one pastor was standing right with God in forgiveness toward his fellow pastor.

And God blessed the congregations with a move of the Spirit that caused people who heard about the story, as evangelists from the congregations spread out and shared the testimony, more and more people were overcome by the power of love and forgiveness and a genuine revival broke out.

I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit to cause a person to give up their pride, and then love and forgive and be generous with grace to people that might even be their enemy.

And this passage is about what brings about revival.

I call it a revival of justice.

Every time I have experienced the moving of God’s Holy Spirit in my life it has been either in worship, or in my own sacrifice of giving up my pride and loving someone who is not easily lovable.

The prophet was singing these words under the power of the Holy Spirit. I was taught that he was not necessarily in control, the Spirit was moving through Him anointing him with the words to say. I was supernatural and it moves beyond human wisdom into the realm of the wisdom of God.

And the wisdom of God, if we want revival, is for us to do justice toward the poor.

The chapter starts out with the people asking God why they fast and pray and no revival comes.

And God answers them with the fact that their religious practices make them feel like they are speaking to God, but if they want to speak to God, they need to take care of the poor in their midst. God told them that fasting is meaningless if they exploit the poor.

He gives them several “If’s” as condition for revival.

If you remove the pointing of the finger.

This is huge for me. It means DON”T JUDGE THE POOR. We can easily justify a lack of concern for the poor if we blame them for their circumstances.

We can say they are lazy, they are stupid, they are ignorant or blame them for making poor choices, like not finishing high school and expecting others to bail them out.

We can say all that and feel better about disobeying the command to care for the poor. But this verse is one that I live my life by when I deal with the poor who are looking for help.

God commands me not to judge them for their reasons. I believe it is a test from God to see if we will obey and love them without condition.

God tells us not to question their circumstances, but to care for their needs. Now that does not mean that I let people take advantage of me. There are people who need to take some responsibility and helping them does make their situation worse. But it isn’t for me to judge. So I pray about it and trust the Holy Spirit to lead me in how I give. And at that point, I trust my gut as if God was leading my conscience.

Now I hope I didn’t just contradict myself and give an excuse to judge them. I don’t. It is just that some people learn of my generosity and then take advantage of it and I don’t let that happen.

So the next IF is if we offer food to the hungry. It is self explanatory. But it is also a standard by which we can judge ourselves as to whether or not we are walking with Christ.

Not that this justifies me, but I look for the beggars on the street corners so that I get the blessing of giving back to Jesus Himself.

Then the subject changes from justice to worship. He goes on to an IF about the Sabbath. He tells them to practice the Sabbath. The Sabbath is a day of rest. It is a day of faith.

God created for 6 days and then rested on the 7^th. And by faith, God tells us to trust in God by resting as well.

It was a respite for both the rich and the poor alike. The poor are desperate, and losing a day to get enough to survive on might seem like a lot to ask. But they did it in faith, trusting that God would provide.

And the OT law about the Sabbath made it clear that even the slaves were to be given a day of rest.

It took a lot of faith for a poor person to spend a day not working to get themselves out of poverty. But following the Sabbath was and is a symbol that we trust God.

Now, I talk about the Sabbath as a day of worship. That is why we spent so much time in Church I was young. We were trying to obey that command. But how is resting considered to be worship?

It comes down to living by faith.

And that brings us full circle to the relieving of the suffering of the poor. Both, trusting God by not working the Sabbath and giving generously come by faith.

Keeping On

 

Text: Hebrews 11:29-12:2

Focus: perseverance

Function: to be inspired by the examples of the OT

²⁹By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land, but when the Egyptians attempted to do so they were drowned. ³⁰By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days. ³¹By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace.

³²And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, ³³who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, ³⁴quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. ³⁵Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. ³⁶Others suffered mocking and flogging and even chains and imprisonment. ³⁷They were stoned to death; they were sawn in two; they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented— ³⁸of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains and in caves and holes in the ground.

³⁹Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, ⁴⁰since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.

12:¹Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, ²looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

I don’t know if I have ever preached a sermon on these last two verses of our text.

I have preached several sermons on Hebrews Chapter 11, the great chapter of faith. I find the examples of faith that are listed there to be inspiring.

The author of Hebrews is trying to explain, in chapter 11, what it means for us to live by faith. He starts out with a definition of faith in the first verse of Chapter 11. He says: Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

And then he goes into this great litany of Old Testament saints whose lives were lived trusting in what God can do for them.

There are heroes in the list.

And when you read the chapter, there is a cadence to it that is exciting as one person’s accomplishments build upon another persons success and God is shown to be present in the lives and affairs of those who trust in God.

And he speaks at the end, as he is wrapping it up for us to remember time after time the stories of people who did great things, or, and here is the important part of our lesson, or, they endured tribulation in faith.

When I think of faith, I think of stories like Daniel who continued to pray to Jehovah despite the King’s order to pray only to him for 90 days. He was thrown into a pit full of hungry lions and the Lord closed the mouths of the lions and he survived the night.

What faith!

He didn’t know if God would deliver him or not. But he knew he would be faithful to God.

It is the same with Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego, the three colleagues of Daniel who refused to bow down to the golden statue and the King threw them into the fiery furnace and they walked around inside the furnace with a 4^th person, probably Jesus Himself, until the King called them out.

The King said to them: “What God can deliver you out of my hands?”

And their answer was this: We don’t know if God will deliver us, but we know this, God is able and if we die or survive, we will not bow down to any other God but Jehovah, the God of the Jews.

Again, great faith! They lived on principle and trusted God for the outcome. They knew that they would witness to God whether they lived or died.

In our text this morning, the author switches from those who performed great miracles, proving the faith, to those who endured great suffering without any release.

Both groups bear witness to God.

Jesus Himself was in both groups. He healed the sick, raised the dead, cast out demons and yet He allowed Himself to endure the pain and cruelty of the cross to show us that we do not have to fight back. With the power of the resurrection, unconditional love conquers overs a multitude of sins. Even the sins committed against us.

Jesus died in faith trusting that God the Father knew what God the Father was doing.

And He entrusted His soul to God at that last moment when said, “Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit.”

Jesus showed us how to live, and also, how to die in faith.

1 Corinthians 15 argues for faith in the fact of the resurrection. He paints a beautiful picture of a similarity between the how a plant and a seed look completely different. The seed is buried, he says it symbolically “dies” when it is buried and it comes to life again as something that looks completely different, and beautiful.

That, is how he describes the spiritual bodies with which we will be resurrected.

It is a passage of hope in the fact of the resurrection.

And, it is a passage of hope in the love and the justice of God.

I want God to be merciful to me when I die and get to the pearly gates.

And when Jesus explains the Lord’s prayer in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus told us that if we want God to be merciful to us, we must be merciful to others as well.

Forgiving them and loving them without condition. What a powerful message about forgiveness when Jesus, from the cross, as God, forgave the men who were torturing Him.

Jesus died in faith knowing the God would vindicate His death by raising Him from the dead.

We too, are called to live and die, in faith.

And let me finish with the thought expressed between chapter 11 and chapter 12.

Those OT saints did not receive the promise, according to the author of Hebrews.

It wasn’t until we become NT saints that the promises are completely fulfilled.

And my theology classes have taught me that the big difference is the atoning sacrifice of Christ which provides a way for the Holy Spirit to live inside of every believer.

Jesus alludes to this when He speaks of John the Baptist being the greatest that came before Him, but the least in the new kingdom is greater and all of the OT saints.

And we learned the difference was that since Jesus cleansed our hearts and forgave us when we trusted in Him to restore us, to save us, to help us, to heal us, when we first placed out trust in Him, His cleansing power made it possible for Him to take up residence in our souls in the form of the Holy Spirit.

This chapter of faith is meant to inspire us to even greater works since the Spirit of God dwells in us. God expects great things from us.

Or better, trust God to be the power to love unconditionally.

And we can by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Let us constantly pray to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

A Call to Action

 

Text: Luke 12:32-40

Focus: Letting our lights shine

Function: to help encourage people to want to do that Christian duty.

³²“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. ³³Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. ³⁴For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

³⁵“Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; ³⁶be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. ³⁷Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. ³⁸If he comes during the middle of the night or near dawn and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.

³⁹“But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. ⁴⁰You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

Last week, we learned about our relationship to money and we began to get a glimpse into the sin of greed. Greed keeps us from resting and trusting God to provide our daily needs.

Jesus continues the theme this week in following verses that we are to live by faith and to trust in Him for everything.

He reminds us that God’s wants us to succeed and that God will do whatever it takes for us to succeed.

We are called to live by faith.

So, Jesus says for us not to be afraid. Fear, again, is a lack of faith and it is one of the things that leads us to greed.

And then Jesus gives us a standard for our own relationship to wealth. He says, Sell your possessions and give alms.

I don’t believe, again, that He is commanding us to impoverish ourselves and then turn to begging for our substance, he didn’t say, sell ALL your possessions. Remember the context, He has just told the story of the rich fool who was greedy and God showed him the problem with greed by taking him home to heaven.

The parable is about greed and He says to us, if greed is your problem, remember to lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven.

It is a call to action for us to live for our heavenly reward.

We can do that, as Jesus said, by being generous toward the poor.

Proverbs 19:7 says that when we give to the poor, we lend to the Lord. God will pay us back, and Jesus is telling us to seek our heavenly reward, not earthly gain.

Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount to lay up treasure in heaven where nothing can take them from us.

And then, verse 35 gives us an imperative: Be dressed and ready for action.

Preachers love to read and speak about verses like this because they are simple, straightforward and they give us something to do.

The promise is, if we are working hard for the Kingdom of God, then we we get to our reward, we will not be left out.

Remember how I said that greed is actually a lack of faith? It is often spurred by the fear that we will not have enough. And it might be more prevalent among those who have known loss and poverty. Fear, that is.

Jesus is speaking this sermon to a group of people who are also living in terrible poverty.

He is giving them the hope of a better future when they get to heaven. But Jesus didn’t come just to save us from our sins so that when we die we can go to heaven and then finally be happy. Jesus came to bring a new Kingdom that loves and cares for everyone. He came to transform cultures into groups of people that are passionate about sharing the blessing.

Jesus came to do much more than save us so that when we die we can go to heaven.

No. They killed Jesus because He stood against the status quo. The gospel is much more than when you die you get to go to heaven if you simply trust in Jesus. That takes away the whole three years of Jesus’ teaching and His call for us to live for the Kingdom of God instead of ourselves.

We live for the kingdom of God because we believe in the promise of God that God will eventually bring justice to this world.

And the action that we are called to is to be light bearers to the good news of Jesus Christ.

We are called to bear the light that Jesus shone.

Be dressed, ready for action and the action is to bear the light.

I am a preacher, to me, as a preacher, that means “Speak up! Speak out against injustice!”

For the early Brethren living in this very community who were involved in the underground railroad, it meant risking their farms and freedom in order to help out those who are being oppressed.

It is a call to action, not just words.

How far does it go? Well, He starts out by saying that if our possessions get in the way, then get rid of them.

The rich man came to Jesus and asked Jesus what work he could do to earn eternal life.

And again, Jesus told the man to sell everything give it to the poor and then he will have treasure in heaven. The man went away sad because he was wealthy and he didn’t want to give up his ease.

We think wealth brings ease. God it is God who provides for us, rich or poor, we are to live by faith in the provision of Jesus for us.

Now, evangelicalism has spiritualized Jesus answer to take away the meaning of our relationship to riches.

They tell us that no one can be saved by works. And that is true. We are saved by faith. And that faith will result in works and if the works to not ensue, then our salvation is in question.

It is a theological dilemma that we have between grace and works.

Jesus said that if we feed the hungry, clothe the naked and visit the prisoners then we are counted as the sheep that will inherit the Kingdom of heaven and that if we don’t we will be cast out into outer darkness.

We can’t spiritualize these words and take away their meaning by saying that salvation is completely by faith and not a result of works.

Jesus’ point is that faith changes us. It happens, I believe, by the power of the Holy Spirit who dwells in everyone who trusts Jesus to save them.

When we listen to the leading and the prodding of the Holy Spirit we learn from God that even the least of these are worth the love and mercy that God has given to them.

So, let us shine our lights for Jesus. I think of a famous quote from a sermon in 1907, it has been repeated by Eleanor Roosevelt, it was picked up in Chinese culture and attributed to Confucius. But it comes from Christendom and it reads like this: “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”

Merely cursing the darkness does not help. It is easy to point out the problems in a society. And Jesus did that well. But the way to be effective to to shine a light for people to see.

It is a positive reaction, a loving reaction, a merciful reaction to the injustices we face so that we can be a witness to the unconditional love of Jesus Christ for others.