Sermon Archive
Readings for 10 June 2007
Proper 5
Year C
1 Kings 17:17-24
The son of the woman, the mistress of the house at Zarephath, became ill; his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. She then said to Elijah, "What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!" But he said to her, "Give me your son." He took him from her bosom, carried him up into the upper chamber where he was lodging, and laid him on his own bed. He cried out to the LORD, "O LORD my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?" Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried out to the LORD, "O LORD my God, let this child's life come into him again." The LORD listened to the voice of Elijah; the life of the child came into him again, and he revived. Elijah took the child, brought him down from the upper chamber into the house, and gave him to his mother; then Elijah said, "See, your son is alive." So the woman said to Elijah, "Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in your mouth is truth."
Galatians 1:11-24
I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.
You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus.
Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days; but I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord's brother. In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie! Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, and I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea that are in Christ; they only heard it said, "The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy." And they glorified God because of me.
Luke 7:11-17
Soon after healing the centurion's slave, Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother's only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, "Do not weep." Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, "Young man, I say to you, rise!" The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, "A great prophet has risen among us!" and "God has looked favorably on his people!" This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.
Sermon
The Rev. Jack Zamboni
I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the Gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin. (Galatians 1:11)
In today’s reading from his Letter to the Galatians, our Patron St. Paul is – big shock – in one of his argumentative moods. Actually, he has good reason to be. He had traveled to Galatia, a region of Asia Minor, now modern-day Turkey, and there had proclaimed the Gospel to some Gentiles who had received it eagerly. After he left the area, some other Christian Teachers from Jerusalem had come to Galatia -- and they’d told the Galatians that Paul was a misguided loose cannon who had gotten the Gospel all wrong!! They claimed that what they taught had the approval of the leaders of the Church in Jerusalem like Peter and James, and that Paul had misinterpreted the true teaching.
Paul is having none of it. A little further on in this chapter, Paul tells the Galatians that the leaders of the Church in Jerusalem had actually approved what he was preaching to the Gentiles. But today, he makes his far more important claim: I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. (Galatians 1:11-12).
Now, Paul says this to strengthen his position with the Galatians -- if the Gospel he preaches came from a direct revelation of Jesus Christ, then the question of whether he has human approval or not doesn’t matter. But to say that the Gospel is not of human origin means much more than that Paul has a leg up on his opponents in this argument.
I once heard someone in seminary say that when theologians write something in Latin, you know they are really serious. Karl Barth, the great Swiss theologian of the 20th century, was fond of saying that the Gospel comes to us extra nos -- that is, outside of us, from beyond us. In Paul’s words, the Gospel is not of human origin. The Gospel is not something people made up or figured out or discovered -- it comes to us from outside us, from beyond us, beyond anything human beings could ever have imagined or expected -- it comes to us as the word and work of God.
That matters – because we human beings need a Gospel extra nos. We need help we cannot give ourselves. We need to be set free, set free from sin, set free from ourselves - and we can’t do that on our own. To become free in the way that matters most – free to live for God -- we need help that is not of human origin, help that comes extra nos, from outside, from beyond, from God. For the tragic truth of humanity is that for we cannot set ourselves free.
To most Americans, that is a hard notion to get our heads and hearts around. Our nation’s founding story is all about setting ourselves free from British rule in the Revolution. We believe in our guts that setting ourselves free from any sort of captivity is mostly a matter of enough hard work and cleverness and maybe a bit of luck.
But Paul would, I think, point to a different part of American history to explain why we need an act of God from beyond ourselves to set us free. He would point to the history of slavery in this country, which ended only when slaves were set free by acts from outside their power: the Emancipation Proclamation and a bloody Civil War. The slaves’ power to free themselves was limited indeed. Paul would say that our situation is more like that than most of us would like to admit: that when it comes to sin in our individual and corporate lives, we live in a kind of bondage in which our own power to live freely for God is limited indeed.
If you don’t believe me, consider the mess in Iraq. The situation there by now is such that there are no good options. Whether the US military stays or goes, surges or withdraws, further death and destruction are virtually guaranteed. And here’s the tragic thing -- much of that awful mess was utterly predictable. Most people have realized that now with the wisdom of 20-20 hindsight. Some people had the wisdom to see and say so before the war was started.
But those making the decisions did not listen to the warnings. Why? Because they believed their plan was the right thing to do and were so sure of the wisdom of their decision that they ignored those who said it was folly. This is not the first time in history this has happened nor will it be the last. Again and again, leaders too sure of themselves and their rightness and their wisdom have fallen into this trap -- to the cost of many.
But here’s the catch. It is not just political leaders who do this – we all do. I have done it, and if you are honest, I suspect you know that you have, too. The arrogance that says, “I’m right, please don’t confuse me with the facts” is not limited to George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. We human beings can be at our most dangerous when we mean well and “know” we are right. Then there are those times when we mean well and actually do see the right path, but fail to follow it. We’re like Peter, who didn’t mean to deny Jesus, but did anyway.
We are all bound by blindness, pride, selfishness, confusion, cluelessness, fear and sin. The leaders who brought us into Iraq are not more bound by sin than the rest of us. We all need help, extra nos. We all need a Gospel not of human origin, Good news from God, to set us free.
And the Good News is this: Utterly beyond human deserving, imagination or discovery, God has come to us in Jesus Christ. God has come, extra nos, from beyond and outside to love us. Not to love us someday when we have our act more together and have learned to live more humbly and wisely, but right now, just as we are, bound as we are by our blindness, pride, selfishness, confusion, cluelessness, fear and sin. “God proves love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us,” Paul writes to the Romans (Romans 5: 8).
A Gospel not of human origin.
Love Extra nos.
Love for us in the messes we routinely make of our lives and the world God has given us.
Astounding love.
And the remarkable thing about this love extra nos is that it has a power to set us free that nothing else does. This love alone can heal what makes us go wrong so often. For what lies underneath so much of the blindness, pride, selfishness, confusion, cluelessness, and sin by which human begins are bound and which wreak such havoc in the world is the terrible fear that we are unloved and unlovable. The Christian faith holds that at bottom, sin in its many forms is a series of gambits, a set of substitutions by which we seek in vain to overcome by acts of self-assertion this deadly fear that we can’t be loved. God’s freely-given love come extra nos is the only thing that has the power to heal this deep wound in our souls.
I hope we all have had the experience of gracious and accepting human love in our lives. Such love can work great healing, and God’s love often comes to us through such human love. When we experience such love, we are better able to love ourselves and therefore to love our neighbors – for as Jesus pointed out, we are likely to love our neighbors just about as well as we love ourselves.
Still, these human loves have their limits,. There are places in our souls they cannot touch. In the end we need more. We need a love that is deeper, broader, higher than humans can give – we need a love not of human origin. The Good News is that we have been given this love in Jesus Christ: a love that embrace us – every last part of us -- as we are; a love that comes to set us free to become more and better than we are now: free to love ourselves, to love others, free to live for God.
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