After a week off from preaching for our combined worship service and carnival to wrap up VBS week (pro-tip: Renting a cotton candy machine was totally worth it!), we’re back to our regular worship schedule for this 2nd Sunday after Pentecost in Year C.
This sermon’s intentionally a little bit on the briefer side as today’s worship services also feature a guest speaker sharing about Breaking the Chains Church, an ELCA congregation inside the Milwaukee Felmers Chaney Correctional Center, and our June monthly ministry partner. During VBS, we also did a service project to make 80 hygiene kits that we gave to Breaking the Chains Church for people being released from incarceration – I talked more about that a couple of weeks ago in my sermon on Paul & Silas in prison.
Today’s Scripture readings are Galatians 3:23-29, Psalm 22:19-28, and Luke 8:26-39. I did repeat a couple sentences from a previous sermon on these texts from June 23, 2019, sharing once again a fascinating geographical insight from that year’s lectionary commentary in Living Lutheran.
Here’s the livestream and sermon podcast audio from Christ the King.
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Grace to you and peace from the One who was, who is, and who is to come, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
A few days ago, I did something you should never do on the internet: I read the comments. Online comments on news stories are almost universally terrible. People can turn anything into political and then personal attacks. And it only gets worse if religion is involved.
Martin Luther said the 8th commandment about not bearing false witness against your neighbor means we should not tell lies about our neighbors, betray or slander them, or destroy their reputations, but rather come to their defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light. Most online commenters should spend more time with their Small Catechisms!
But I read the comments. This article was posted on the ELCA’s Facebook page, and there were two people getting into a debate about what the gospel is, what message our church should be teaching.
We all know we’re supposed to share the gospel message, and hopefully you know the word “Gospel” means “good news,” but what exactly is the gospel?
One person argued the good news of the gospel was in her personal story of working to conform herself to Christ. She said, “I had to wrestle with a lot of sins and throw off all kinds of terrible habits (not small ones by any means)…I had to abandon so much to embrace Christ, and that process is still continuing. That is the message of the Gospel!”
And that’s all good, right? God calls to repent from sin. We started worship today like we do nearly every week by confessing the brokenness in our lives, honestly facing what we’ve done wrong. Jesus calls us to turn from our sin and follow him, to live better. Following Jesus should lead us to sin less and love our neighbors more.
But as the other person in the debate pointed out, that’s not actually the gospel. “Shape up and do better” is law, a commandment, a task to do.
That’s not the part that’s the good news. The good news is that God loves you. Period. As you are, in your uniqueness, despite your fears and your doubts, in your sin, no matter what you’ve done, no matter what’s been done to you.
God’s love for you does not depend on who you are, how hard you work to repent, how religious you are, how faithful you are, how much you give, or even what you say or don’t say on the internet.
God loves you because that’s who God is. That’s the gospel. God gives us faith as a gift, by grace. It’s not something we can earn or work for; it’s a gift. And of course, knowing God’s grace changes how we live.
And of course there’s work involved. As you read God’s word more, as you pray more, the Holy Spirit transforms you. Your heart and will align more with God, you can be more loving. You can feed the hungry, welcome the strange, visit the imprisoned, comfort the grieving and lonely, stand up for people who are treated unjustly. Do the things. There’s plenty of work we should do.
But whether you do any of it or not, God still loves you. All the good, important work we do comes after the work Jesus has done for us. The order matters.
To quote Luther again, “I believe that by my own understanding or strength, I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy, and kept me in the true faith.” God does it.
Paul writes to the church in Galatia, “There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” That’s a radical message. Saying there’s no longer male or female goes against government policy.
The powers of this world work so hard to divide us, to label us, to split us into tribes and haves and have nots; to tell people that because of where they’re from, or because of their past, or because of some aspect of their identity, they are other. They are less than; they are separate. The gospel says the opposite.
Your socioeconomic status, your skin color, your immigration status, your native language, your criminal record, your age, your mental or physical health, your gender, none of that defines who you are to God.
In Christ Jesus, we are made one. We are all sinners, forgiven, redeemed, and loved by God.
As that person in the Facebook comments said, “The message of the Gospel is not ‘abandon who you are.’ It’s ‘you are loved—fully, already, now. Live in that freedom.’”
In that strange Gospel reading with the demons and the pigs, there’s a lot going on, but what I want you to notice this morning is Jesus’ care for the man with demons.
This is a man who’s been cast out of society, bound with chains and shackles, who’s living in the wild among the tombs.
He’s in the land of the Gerasenes, Luke says, which is not necessarily the name of a geographic place, but a description: It’s the Greek pronunciation of a word meaning “the banished or exorcised ones.” The world has given up on this man, exiled him, but Jesus includes him.
Jesus “does not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted,” (Psalm 22:24) but cares for him. Jesus gives him healing. Jesus sets him free.
His life changes—he becomes an evangelist, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus has done for him. But the change in his life comes after Jesus saves him; Jesus doesn’t save him because of what he’s done.
At this church, we proclaim God’s grace is for you, no matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done or failed to do. As we sang, God gathers us in, the lost and forsaken, the rich and the haughty, the blind and the lame, the proud and the strong. Not because of who we are, but because of who God is. God is love.
Hear the good news of the gospel: There is nothing, no sin, not even death, that can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen (Romans 8:38-39)