Eleventh Sunday after Trinity, 2010
Text: St. Luke 18:9-14
The Rev. Jerry Kistler
St. Stephen’s Reformed Episcopal Church
“The Scandal of the Gospel”
Several
years ago, I suggested to the kids in their Confirmation class that we print up
a new tract for them to hand out to their friends at school and in the
neighborhood: a single piece of card stock folded in half with only two
statements printed on the inside. On the left side it would read, “Apart from
Christ, God hates you,” and on the right side it would say, “In Christ, you’re
so righteous that not even God can find fault with you.” Below each statement would
be a simple list of scripture references, and that’s it.
Well
they suggested to me, in no uncertain terms, that they’d really rather not get beat up, and they’d like to keep
their friends, so I decided not to make it a requirement to pass out those
tracts for their Confirmation, because I’m nice that way. But I think my next
lesson was on the topic of Christian martyrdom.
Apart
from Christ, God hates you. In Christ, you’re so righteous that not even God
can find fault with you. These are the two most fundamental truths of the
Gospel, and what a scandal it would be if we were to actually confront people
with these stark, uncompromising truths.
The
Gospel of God’s free grace in Jesus Christ is scandalous to the unregenerate
mind, because it is founded on an even more scandalous truth: the truth that we
are not basically good, that we are not deserving of God’s love and favour, that
we are not able to pull ourselves up by
our own boot straps to achieve any righteous of our own, and that, as a matter
of fact, we are naturally—for no other reason than being born in Adam—“children
of wrath,” as it is written in the second chapter of Ephesians.
This
is scandalous. This is offensive, not only to the ears of unbelievers, but
sometimes even to our own ears. We’re sometimes embarrassed by the intolerance
of it. We’re fearful of being ridiculed and even hated for saying such things
to our nice neighbors and friends. Believing is one thing, but being a martyr
is another. We don’t want to offend.
But
in truth it is the gospel message itself that is the offense. It is the gospel
itself that is the scandal — if it really is the gospel, and not some modern revision
with all that hard edges smoothed over to make it more palatable.
Apart
from Christ, God hates you. In Christ, you’re so righteous that not even God
can find fault with you.
I’m
not sure which one of those statements is more scandalous. I would suppose the
former. I would suppose the idea that God could be so intolerant as to reject
everyone who is not a Christian, that all the good people out there—people like
me, of course—are good only in their own minds, but not in the eyes of God, and
that they actually deserve, and will receive, the eternal wrath of God if they
do not turn to Christ… this is a terrible scandal for the people of our time.
If you haven’t learned that by personal experience, you might not be preaching
the gospel.
As
a kingdom of priests, every one of us has the responsibility to preach the
gospel—this gospel— for it is the gospel that all of the people of God have
preached in all times everywhere. It was the gospel preached by St. John the
Baptist, who proclaimed to all who came to him, “He who believes on the Son [of
God] has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see
life, but the wrath of God abides on him” (Jn. 3:36). It was the gospel that Jesus Christ Himself
preached. “God so loved the world,” He said, “that He gave His only begotten
Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting
life.” We like that part. But He goes on to say, “He who believes in Him is not
condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not
believed in the name of the only begotten Son” (Jn.
To
make the point, Jesus told a parable unto certain which trusted in themselves
that they were righteous, and despised others.
We’ve
heard the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican so many times were not even
phased by the scandal of it. We can’t even begin to imagine the kind public
outrage this parable would have caused among its original hearers. The parable
no longer shocks like it did then. So let’s change the characters.
What
if in place of the Pharisee we were to substitute one of our culture’s sacred people, one of our moral untouchables, one of “the good people”— a person who is
off-limits from moral scrutiny. That’s what a Pharisee was in Jesus’ day.
A
while back now, People magazine
published a list of our top one-hundred heroes and icons of Twentieth Century,
and just about anyone on that list would work for our purposes. But we could get
really bold and choose someone like, say, JFK. Or better yet, Princess Diana.
Or if we really wanted to live dangerously, we might caste in the part of the
Pharisee the closest person to a civil saint we have: the good doctor, Martin
Luther King. I am living dangerously,
aren’t I? These are the untouchables of our society—the good people, those who
are beyond scrutiny.
Well
then let’s imagine that these three were still alive, and there was a huge
ecumenical gathering in the National Cathedral in Washington D.C., and these
three were given special invitations to come and to be honored and awarded for
their many laudable deeds for their fellow men. Okay, I think we can image
that. But then, as these three were receiving their awards at the front of the
cathedral, and being lauded and applauded by the audience, a bedraggled looking
young woman, instantly recognizable as a prostitute, and also a heroin addict
because of all the track marks up and down her arms, silently slipped in the
very last pew, knelt down on the kneeler, and with tears running down her face
opened the prayer book, and began quietly to pray the Penitential Office
beginning with the 51st Psalm: “Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy
great goodness; according to the multitude of thy mercies do away mine offences.”
And
then imagine the Dean of the Cathedral (and this is a real
stretch, but just try to imagine it). Imagine him getting up to give the
homily, and, having noticed this penitent prostitute in the back row, he says
to the people, “You know, all you people think the President, the Princess, and
the Preacher here are some pretty good folk in comparison to most, especially
in comparison to that prostitute in the back row. Surely these three will be in heaven one day, because isn’t it obvious
that they’re God’s special children? But I tell you, unless they too cast
themselves upon the mercy of God, not one of them is as righteous as this
prostitute, because she bears the righteousness of Christ. And Jack and Di and Martin will be looking from their place of torment
across the great chasm at her seated
with Christ in glory, unless they too renounce their own goodness and trust in Him
for their righteousness before God.”
Now
that’s a sermon that might cause a stir. That’s a sermon that might wake some
people up in the National Cathedral. That’s a sermon that would most likely
offend a lot of people, and would even cause some people to leave the church.
But darn it if that isn’t the gospel our Lord preached to the self-righteous,
self-deluded, of His day.
Apart
from Christ there is no hope. The wrath of God abides on all who trust in
themselves that they are good and deserving of His favor. But in Christ, even the lowliest of sinners
is more righteous than our greatest civil saints and heroes and icons, because as
it is written, “none are good, no not one,” except the Lord Jesus Christ, and
all who are in Him by faith.
Beloved
this is the gospel we’re called to preach. It’s an offensive gospel. It’s a
gospel that may cause you to be reviled. It’s a gospel that may bring you shame
according to the world’s standards. But it is the truth that your lost friends
and neighbors and relatives must hear in order to be saved.
The
real scandal of the Gospel is that people like you, and people like me have
been given grace and not judgment. That’s the real scandal. And people who have
received the grace of God recognize how offensive it is to our natural sense of
fairness: people like the apostle Paul, who looked at himself and confessed
that he was not even worthy of being called an apostle, because he once
murdered the people of God. But by the grace of God, even a sinner like him
became the great apostle that he was (1 Cor. 15:9-10).
He says, “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ
Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of who I am chief. However, for this
reason I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show all
longsuffering, as a pattern to those who are going to believe on Him, for
everlasting life” (1 Tim. 1:15, 16).
And
so