Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, August 22, 2010
Solemn Mass
By the Reverend Stephen Gerth 

Year C: Isaiah 28:14-22; Psalm 46; Hebrews 12:18-19,22-29; Luke 13:22-30

Today’s gospel lesson is from the middle of Luke’s thirteenth chapter. A few Sundays ago we heard the beginning of Luke’s eleventh chapter, which is mostly Luke’s account of Jesus teaching his disciples what we call the Lord’s Prayer and teaching them about insistent prayer. This teaching included a different response to those who knock and ask. From the eleventh chapter: 

[Jesus] said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything’? I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him whatever he needs.[1] 
 

Today’s Jesus, who unlike the Jesus of chapter eleven, doesn’t even hear those who stand outside and knock. 

The late Scott Peck’s book on personal maturity, personal discipline, The Road Less Traveled was published in 1978. [2]   Sometime in the 1980s it made it to the New York Times' bestseller list and stayed there for more than ten years - coining money for Peck and for Simon & Schuster.

While I don’t buy lottery tickets and daydream about winning the lottery, I confess I do daydream about what kind of money I might make if I wrote “the” book on anger – one of the most difficult of emotions. I think somewhere beyond anger, through anger, past anger, is what Saint Paul called the peace that passes all understanding.[3] I think of this peace as forgiveness. I haven’t tried to write that book for many reasons, the most important one being that in my life, in my heart, I don’t know how to get from anger, from evil, from betrayal, to forgiveness. But you and I do know how Luke the Evangelist takes Jesus to the place of forgiveness; it’s the place of his death and resurrection. And that is where Luke is inviting you and me to go and live by faith. 

I think it’s fair to say that overall Luke is working through his gospel and his second book the Acts of the Apostles on forgiveness, as much as any other theme. In much the same way, I think we can see Matthew working on the law.

Matthew, for his part, likes his Jesus’ stern teaching about the law and the commandments. But Jesus’ unexpected death and even more unexpected resurrection alter what has gone before. Matthew doesn’t try explain it; he just proclaims it. 

Luke, again, is working too. Despite his parable of the Lost Sheep[4] and the Forgiving Father – also called the Prodigal Son,[5] Luke likes his Jesus’ teaching about the fires of hell. Not only do we have the words from today, I’m not sure there is a more vivid depiction of hell than the passage where no mercy can be shown to the rich man who is in torment, not even a drop of water.[6] 

Mark mentions the temptation of Jesus by Satan,[7] but Matthew and Luke both describe them.[8] They’re pretty much the same – a temptation to turn stones to bread, to test God his Father, to worship Satan in exchange for the kingdoms of this world. I think an argument can be made that the greater temptations for Christians and their churches are the seductions of the law and the seductions of death and hell. 

Two weeks ago, on a first visit to Los Angeles – great weather – I visited the new Roman Cathedral, Our Lady of the Angels. In many ways it is a very successful building. I’m more than willing to wait for our own Cathedral of Saint John the Divine to be finished, but for a grand new church, Our Lady of the Angels is very successful – except, with respect, for one image. 

Behind the principal altar of the church, there is a large Good Friday crucifix. The building mostly reads that the People of God are the Body of Christ. But the visual focus of the building is not the assembly of the baptized who share in the hew life of Easter. The theological focus is Jesus’ death – and not his resurrection. 

If there is a way for you and me as individuals to get past a religion of arbitrary rules, to get from anger to forgiveness, it is through the mystery of death and resurrection. 

It was hard for Matthew and Luke to get there and to stay there – and I think it’s not so much easier for us human beings to get there and to stay there today. Together these gospels seem to reflect pretty well something of the journey of human lives in every generation. Religious laws, fear of evil, feat of death, are all present and past realities. But the greater reality is the grace of God and our Christian faith that beyond the mystery of life with its sin, is God’s greatest mystery and gift, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. 

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Copyright © 2010 The Society of the Free Church of St. Mary the Virgin, New York, New York. 

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