[Rom 5:1-8]
Grace to you and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Last Sunday, Trinity Sunday, began the Semester Ecclesiae, the Semester of the Church, when readings and collects focus on what the Church has learned from the previous Semester of the Lord, the Semester Domini. It’s a semester in which the Church is given time to inwardly digest and grow, to go out and teach and preach, and minister. Green Time. (Also called Ordinary Time, even if there’s nothing ordinary about it.)
God proves his love, which means we, all of us have nothing to prove. ‘All’ we have to do is go out and serve.
Peace from God.
And God is all things,
Is in all things,
So this means also peace with God’s self,
With others,
With the world,
With everything.
In Hebrew this concept is called shalom: in modern Hebrew this of course means hello and peace, but it implies also holiness and wholeness, unity.
And this means both in body and soul, divine and human, like the two natures of Christ, in our own self and through the Holy Spirit.
By Faith and Grace.
These two are interconnected, it ‘s not just what you know or accept, not just intellectual or emotional, but fully one, fully connected to each other. They’re not disconnected, separated from each other; like something you see from afar but cannot grasp.
This also means that it can never be something just passive. It moves, with everything and anything involved: patience, hope, mercy, love, forgiveness…
Faith and Grace do, make, are.
Faith and Grace are interconnected and that has consequences, not just for the salvation of humankind, not just for the next life after this life, but also for the here and now. The disciples were real people in a real place, with real hopes and disappointments and ideals and struggles.
It’s not enough to just comprehend or accept that God has forgiven our sins through his own Son; forgiveness and mercy aren’t things that you look at from afar.
The onlooker must do, make, be.
Many people know many things, have many opinions, are educated and informed, think, feel, look, believe… But then, after all that, well… Many Christians included.
In 1520, Martin Luther, the German reformer, wrote in The Freedom of a Christian,
“A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”
Justification through faith alone is an active thing but also and activating thing.
We were made free, we were forgiven to share our shalom with others and the world, to proclaim shalom, the peace from God.
This is the diaconal calling for us today, here: as long as God is engaged, we must engage too. God takes care of salvation and eternity, so we can take care of others, other Christians, other people, other things out in the world, creation.
Faith and Grace are the call to minister in a world where many people, also many Christians, need ministering to, need certainty, need help.
When they’ve crying out for Absolution,
When they’re crying out for Baptism and Holy Communion,
When they’re crying out for freedom,
When they’re crying out for justice,
When they’re crying out for equality,
When they’re crying out for human rights,
When they’re hungry, angry, scared, forgotten, downtrodden, poor, addicted, depressed, hurt, abused, tortured, defrauded, cheated, neglected and ignored, taken for granted.
All of these, without exception.
All people, without exception.
Active Faith is Faith that’s tangible, that’s understandable, that’s approachable, that does, makes, and is. Not just a word, not just a deed, but both.To be and perhaps not to be, today, to lay down one’s life for a friend, or even a stranger.
In 1937, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor, theologian and martyr, wrote in The Costs of Discipleship,
“Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: "ye were bought at a price," and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.”
Or as St Paul tells us,
5:8 But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.
Justification through faith and diaconal ministry are parent and child, not the same, but related and intimately interconnected. One truly happens with and alongside the other.
God sets in motion, so we can run with it, take it up and do great things as coworkers -like those first disciples- with God in a world which is in need of a whole lot of work, a whole lot of shalom.
...suffering produces endurance,
5:4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,
5:5 and hope does not disappoint us,...
Interconnected to each other, to people, to ourselves, to God.
To rediscover this unity, this wholeness, to experience it, to recognise it, to do and to believe, that is the task for our Semester Ecclesiae, Semester of the Church, Green Time. (Also called Ordinary Time, even if there’s nothing ordinary about it.)
Each time, like God has done and still does each time again and again, we rediscover in Faith and Grace this calling, when we set this goal before us, then the world can be a vineyard, one-of-a-kind, fully at peace, in shalom.
Today, God still proves his love, which means we, all of us have nothing to prove. All we have to do today is go out and serve.
Peace -still- from God.
And God is still all things,
Is still in all things,
So this still means also peace with God’s self,
With others,
With the world,
With everything.