Sunday
06/16/19 - Sidney UMC
Sermon Title: “Justified by Faith”
Old Testament
Scripture: Psalm 8
New Testament
Scripture: Romans 5:1-5
Gospel Lesson:
John 16:12-15
Welcome again,
brothers and sisters, friends! Today is a big day! In fact, we celebrate three
different things on this day. On this day, we celebrate Father’s Day. We
celebrate biological fathers, step-fathers, grand-parents, adoptive and foster fathers,
and all the men that have been in our lives that have fathered us in some way,
shape, or form. Today we honor all men, as all men have fathered someone or
something. Some of us have our own children, and some of us are father-like
figures to many. Maybe you had a coach, a teacher, a neighbor, a pastor, or an
uncle. Perhaps we have had people in our lives that in addition to our biological
fathers were very much like fathers to us. Perhaps also, some of you here didn’t
or don’t have good biological fathers, but hopefully there have been men in
your life that have loved you like a father would. We also have the unchanging
love of God our Father, our creator, in heaven.
So, it’s Father’s Day, and it is also secondly, a special
giving Sunday in the life of the United Methodist Church, called “Peace with
Justice Sunday”. The entire global United Methodist Connection/Church
celebrates all six of the special giving Sundays that we have, as these were
created at our ever 4-year worldwide gathering, called General Conference.
These special giving Sundays are designed to take donated money, along with a
lot of prayer, and the church then balls all that money together. In doing
this, we are able as a United Methodist Church to raise decent sums of money
for the various ministries that these special giving Sundays support. In
addition to these special giving Sundays, some of the apportionments or
ministries shares that our church pays, goes to fund various ministries both in
the United States, and around the world.
So
what is “Peace with Justice Sunday”? Well let me read a little bit about this
special giving Sunday to you, taken from http://www.umcgiving.org.
This is what it says:
“When you give on Peace with Justice Sunday, your gift makes
possible our critical kingdom work in the world. Because you give” For example:
- Methodists
spearhead a peace ministry uniting Arizona border communities
- United
Methodists in Liberia are being equipped to implement the denomination’s
Social Principles to address social-justice issues
- Pennsylvania
students are educating their community about sex-trafficking at home and
abroad
These initiatives, and hundreds of other ones, are possible
because you give?” (http://www.umcgiving.org/ministry-articles/peace-with-justice-sunday).
So this special giving Sunday is certainly
more focused on social, political, and economic issues. The General Conference of
the United Methodist Church has asked that all United Methodist Churches participate
in all of our special giving Sundays, so we are participating this Sunday in “Peace
with Justice Sunday”.
If you would like to donate towards “Peace
with Justice” Sunday, please put the funds in the envelope in your bulletin, or
indicate your funds on the memo line of your check, or mark the envelope that
you put your money in. We will then make sure that this money gets to our
conference office, and from there to these ministries.
Now
with this all said, this is also thirdly, “Trinity Sunday” in the life of the
church. This is the Sunday that we celebrate our great God that is three in
one, or one in three, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Father, the
creator, who has created the heavens and the earth, his son Jesus Christ, who
took on flesh and was God on earth. Lastly, but not least, the Holy Spirit of
God, the third person of the Holy Trinity that is the person of God that moves
in and through us.
As
the first verse of our first hymn from this morning “Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty” says, once again:
“God in three persons, blessed Trinity”
(UMH,
pg. 64).
On
this Trinity Sunday, and every Sunday, we celebrate our God who is of infinite grace,
power, love, majesty, light, and life. We celebrate the person of God who
creates, the person of God who took on flesh and walked among us, and the
person of God who blows through us like a rushing wind.
“God in three persons, blessed Trinity”
(UMH,
pg. 64).
I also think that it is funny that “Trinity
Sunday” falls on a Sunday that the church celebrates three different things.
Normally we would say, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
We could jokingly this morning say, but not seriously, “In the name of the
Father’s Day, the Peace with Justice Sunday, and the Trinity Sunday”! Funny
that on the Sunday that we take special time to focus on the Triune God, that
we have a Triune Sunday of celebrations.
The sermon title that picked for this
morning, as you might have already read in your worship bulletin, is called “Justified
by Faith”. On this Father’s Day, I truly hope that we had or have great
fathers, step-fathers, grand-fathers, or men in our lives that loved us, cared
for us, and guided us.
With this said, for some of us,
whoever it was, we were mistreated. Some of us have been told and treated in
ways that were not loving. Maybe some of us here were told things like, “you
will never amount to anything!” Maybe were told, “You’re no good, and not
loved!” I certainly could go on and on with examples like this. For some us, we
have felt in our lives that we were not good enough, or maybe still are not
good enough. Some of us might have had a father, parents, relatives, or other
people in our lives that told us how not good we were.
The effects of telling a child with
great frequency or mistreating a child in such ways, can create a sense of
inadequacy in a child. Sometimes, when children like this grow up, they never
feel good enough. So much so, that some of these people cannot believe in an
all loving, merciful, just, and righteous God. Why can’t they? Well in part,
because such things were never even close to being modeled in their lives. How can
this Triune God of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, truly love us in a way that
the rest of the world at times has not? Faith can be a struggle, because we are
called to believe in the infinite grace, mercy, and love of God.
When
I was a chaplain intern at SUNY Upstate University Hospital a few years ago, I
was assigned the hematology and oncology units at the hospital. So, the cancer
wards. On these wards there were some that had mild cancer, but some were
literally dying from stage-4 cancer.
In ministering to these various folks, sometimes those who
were dying of cancer would convey doubt, worry, fear, and regret. Sometimes
hospital patients that told me that they were practicing Christian’s told me
that they feared death, around getting into heaven. I would sometimes ask the
patients that said to me that they were Christian, and who were dying, “well
how do you get into heaven?” Often they would tell me by repenting of our sins to
God, accepting Christ as our Lord and Savior, knowing Christ, and following
Christ. Of course, I got various other answers sometimes to.
When a person then told me how they get to heaven, and they
also told me they believe in Jesus, I would then ask them, “Well why are
worried about going to heaven then?” I would get answers such as, “Well
Chaplain Paul, it just seems too good to be true,” or “I know that Jesus died
for me, but can I really be forgiven?,” or “I hope that I was a good enough
person to go to heaven”.
As Christians, for the last two-thousand years, we almost unanimously
agree that Jesus Christ, in some form or fashion, died for the sins of all of
humanity on the cross. In the Methodist Tradition, along with many other
Christian Traditions, we believe that we are “Justified” by faith in Christ,
and faith in Christ alone. This means, that we believe that Jesus Christ on the
cross died for the sins of humanity, past, present, and future. We are born
into sin, and born with original sin, but Christ, and his saving work on the
cross is what saves us.
I remember when I was a Chaplain Intern at the hospital in
Syracuse helping a Roman Catholic Priest named Father Innocent with “Stations
of the Cross” during Holy Week. This was done in the hospital chapel, and was also
live on camera to the whole hospital. What struck me was at the beginning of
each of the “Stations of the Cross”, we said the following:
“We adore you, O Christ,
and we bless you. Because, by your holy
cross, you have redeemed the world” (https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/resources/prayers/devotions/to-our-lord-jesus-christ/stations-of-the-cross).
So
for two-thousand years, the universal church, which spans the globe has largely
believed that Jesus Christ on his cross died for our sins. So how do we get
heaven? How are we good enough?
Hopefully
our fathers and father figures told us that we were good enough. If they didn’t
though, then how do we know that we are good enough for our Heavenly Father? I
was blessed growing up to have men in my life there were encouraging and who
told that I was good enough, but not everyone was.
This takes me to
our scripture from Romans 5:1-5 for this morning. The Apostle Paul tell us in
very clear language in this scripture, how to be “Justified,” how to be “good
enough” for God. Let’s look once again at what Romans 5:1-15 says. Once again
it says:
“Therefore, since we are justified
by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord
Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of
God” (Rom. 5:1-2, NRSV).
According this
scripture, and many others in the New Testament, our faith in Jesus Christ is
enough! We are “Justified” before God and even have peace with God, because of
Jesus Christ, and what he accomplished on the cross. Further, we can stand and
even boast in knowing that we do and will share the glory of God for all of eternity.
We are good enough, as faith is enough. If we repent of our sins, if we believe
in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, and if we live for him, then that is enough!
The Apostle
Paul continues on in this scripture from Romans saying once again:
“And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing
that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and
character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has
been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom. 5:3-5, NRSV).
The Apostle
Paul is saying here, now that you know that you have salvation, now that you
know that your faith in Christ has “Justified” you to go to heaven, know that
we will at times suffer. Remember through the suffering though, that God is
with us, and we are redeemed through the life giving blood of Jesus Christ our
Lord, and his blood alone.
So emphatic about this is the Apostle Paul that he says in
Roman 8:38-39:
“For I am convinced that neither
death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to
come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39, NRSV).
If we love
Christ, we are “Justified,” whether the men in our lives told us that we were
good enough or not. God says that through his son we are redeemed, saved, loved,
chosen, and restored. Hopefully many of us have had fathers in our lives that
reaffirmed these truths, and reinforced them with their love for us.
Now as I said,
these sorts of scripture are all throughout the New Testament. The most famous
of which comes from the mouth of Jesus Christ himself. In John 3:16 Jesus says
that famous verse of scripture:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so
that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (Jn.
3:16, NRSV).
Often in the gospels when someone was
sick or needed Jesus’ healing, Jesus would be moved by that person’s faith.
Often Jesus would say, “Go, your faith has made you well”.
I have met some people that have told me, that some other
people, or pastors, or priests, have told them that because of something that
they did that they were “going to hell”. Friends, only God can judge our souls,
and Jesus says “have faith in me”. Jesus says, faith is enough. Jesus said believe
in the Father that sent me, believe in me, and believe in the power of the Holy
Spirit. It is by faith that we are “Justified” before God, and faith alone!
In our gospel of John reading for this morning once again,
Jesus tells again about the promise that Holy Spirit of God would show up and
move in and through us. Jesus says once again:
“I still have many things to say to
you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into
all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he
hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify
me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the
Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and
declare it to you” (Jn. 16:12-15,
NRSV).
Jesus is
saying, that if you know the Father in heaven, then you know him. Jesus is also
saying on this “Trinity Sunday” that you must also know the Holy Spirit. The person
of God who creates, the person of God who saves, and the Holy Spirit that fills
and sanctified us.
People have also
asked me, “Pastor Paul, if all we need is faith, then why do we go to church,
why do we do good works, and why do we help others, if faith is enough, as you
say?” The answer to this, is that faith saves us, but living like Christ and
growing more into Christ’s image sanctifies or purifies us. We are saved
through faith, but perfected in God’s love through prayer, scripture, fasting,
good works, and etc.
So do I
believe that works get us to heaven? No. Do I believe in the importance of good
works? Absolutely, if we are redeemed by Christ, then daily we must live and
love others like Christ loves us. In doing this, God sanctifies and purifies
us, so that we might spread social and scriptural holiness across the world.
When it comes
to works, I really two quotes from great reformer Martin Luther. Luther said of
good works among other things, these two things:
1. “God does not
need your good works, but your neighbor does.”
2. “Good works
do not make a good man, but a good man does good works.” (https://www.azquotes.com/author/9142-Martin_Luther/tag/good-work).
Friends, brothers and sisters, faith is Christ enough, and
on this Father’s Day, I hope and I pray that you have or had fathers or men in
your that loved you and treated in ways that reinforced this. If not, on this “Trinity
Sunday,” know that Triune God loves you, and that the work of his Son Jesus
Christ on the cross, is enough. Faith is enough, as we are “Justified by Faith.”
Amen.
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