While Pastor Blain was on vacation, I had the privilege of preaching on July 6, 2014, at my home congregation, Ascension Lutheran in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. The texts for the sermon were Romans 7:15-25 and Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30.
Please join me in prayer.
Good and gracious God, thank you for this time to gather together and worship you. Thank you for bringing each one of us here today to be reminded of your love and care for us. Help us to find ways to live for you, rather than living for ourselves; to look for ways to serve you and to demonstrate your love by serving our neighbors.
Amen.
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
What are you loyal to? Whom do you serve? That might be a dangerous question to ask as we celebrate Independence Day this weekend, but give me a chance.
Martin Luther famously said, “Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.” If what matters most to you is money, then money is your god, what you’re worshiping.
If our ultimate loyalty is to our country, to our nation, then our country becomes our god.
If the most important thing in my life is myself, then I’m taking God’s place.
If we’re truly following God, then God is at the center of our lives, the center of all our decisions, of all our actions.
But no matter how hard we try, it doesn’t work like that. We put ourselves ahead of God all the time. I know I do. We live life for ourselves, not for God.
We do things for our own benefit, not for our neighbors, like Jesus tells us to. That’s idolatry. It’s putting ourselves in front of God, treating ourselves as more important than God. We do it all the time.
And we should know better. We do know better! As we just said in confession at the beginning of the service today, we know we have not loved as we ought to love, we have not lived as we ought to live, and we have not given as we ought to give. We recognize our sin of putting ourselves ahead of God.
But we do it anyway. We don’t have the choice to stop sinning. We always do things out of self-interest; it’s part of being human. That’s what Paul describes in our lesson from Romans today.
Turn in your bulletin to page 6, to that reading from Romans, and read what Paul writes in verse 1 with me. “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” That’s a pretty honest description of a lot of life.
“I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” You know what it’s called when you keep doing something, even when you try to stop? When something inside you keeps doing what you don’t want to be doing?
It’s an addiction. Paul is describing an addiction to sin, an addiction to ourselves. And we all have it. We’re all addicted.
Believe it or not, this is actually one of my favorite passages from the Bible. It seems a little abstract, but Paul’s talking about real life. Do you ever argue with yourself about doing something? Do you find yourself doing things you know you’ll regret later? That’s what Paul’s talking about.
When I think of sin, I usually think of major things, like killing someone, or burning down a building, but the sin Paul’s talking about here is not just huge, terrible things. I don’t think I’ve done anything really awful recently, and I’d guess you probably haven’t either, but we constantly do things we shouldn’t, things we know are wrong, even though we know better.
I know I’ll get better gas mileage and not risk a speeding ticket if I drive slower, but I get impatient. I know I should eat vegetables with dinner, but, well, I like ice cream. Maybe those aren’t so bad, but they’re still symptoms of my addiction to sin, of my addiction to myself.
I was on a mission trip to Saint Paul this last week with my wife Christin’s youth group from Illinois, and one of the things that stood out to me was how easy it is to ignore the need around us.
Many of you have been on mission trips or done intentional service work, so you know that when you’re there, it’s easy to see needs and problems and step in and help.
For me, it was easy last week to go visit people in a nursing home when I was told to go do it. It’s easy to care about poverty in Belize or Haiti when we’re fundraising for a trip or sending a team there, or to think about needs here in Fond du Lac when it’s our week to do Loaves and Fishes.
But in the rest of life, I don’t know about you, but it’s really easy for me to miss opportunities to serve. It’s not that I don’t care about people’s needs, but so often, I simply don’t notice. I get so wrapped up in whatever I’m doing, I forget to find those opportunities to serve others, to serve God.
Pastor Blain has been talking recently about seven marks of discipleship, seven ways we live out who we are created and called to be as children of God. As Christians, we know the importance of praying daily, worshiping regularly, reading and studying the Bible, and the other marks of discipleship.
But if you’re like me, there are times when you don’t live all those marks. Even knowing what God calls us to do, we spend a lot of time doing the opposite.
The last of these marks of discipleship can be especially easy to ignore. As Christians, we’re called to give freely and joyfully. That’s one that can be really easy to just…forget to do.
There’s always an excuse for not giving. We know what we ought to do, but we do something different. And it’s not just giving because we feel we ought to, but giving joyfully.
I’ve heard about churches where people applaud when the pastor says it’s time for offering, but I’ve never been to one! But maybe we should. I mean, it’s exciting that we have the opportunity to give, to help others. We’re giving out of gratitude to God, not out of obligation.
Sometimes I do get excited at donating, or about helping others. But certainly not always, even though I wish I did.
And it’s not just giving when the ushers come down the aisles and pass a basket. It’s constantly looking for opportunities to give, to serve.
We know what we ought to do, but we keep failing at doing it. And you know what? That’s normal. I wish I had a solution, some self-help system to help you always do the right thing. I know I could sure use it!
But we can’t change it. The sin Paul talks about is both a choice, and an addiction.
On one level, we have the power to choose to sin, to choose to act in our own self-interest at the expense of others. And of course, we can sometimes choose to do good, to joyfully give.
But on another level, Paul is pretty clear that even if we decide to do the right thing, to consistently live like we’re called to live, when we try it, we discover it’s impossible.
No matter how hard we try, we can’t escape our addiction.
That’s an overwhelming thought. We’re stuck. In Paul’s words, we’re captive to the law of sin that dwells in us. We are in slavery to sin.
That’s a hard truth to hear. Listening to the tone of Paul’s writing, he sounds pretty depressed. Look at verse 24. “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”
As I picture Paul writing this letter, I imagine him pausing there. The situation is hopeless… At least, if it’s up to us, it’s hopeless. But…verse 25, ”Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
Because God doesn’t leave us there. God doesn’t leave us stuck in our addiction, stuck as prisoners to sin.
When we realize the hopelessness of our situation, as we realize we keep failing no matter how hard we try, that’s when we need to hear the other part of the story.
That’s when we need to hear the good news Jesus brings. That’s when we need to hear about grace.
Flip over to the next page of the bulletin, away from the Romans verse to verse 28 of the Gospel reading from Matthew. Jesus says, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”
Even as we are addicted to sin, as we keep disobeying God, as we’ve proven over and over that we can’t turn to God, God comes to us. Jesus calls us in our selfish addictions. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”
As he stops and thinks about how much in bondage to sin he is, Paul remembers that there is freedom, in Christ. He asks, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?”
Then he answers his own question. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Today’s reading ends there, but if we kept reading a few more verses, we’d hear some of the most important words of grace in the entire Bible.
Paul starts off the next chapter, Romans 8, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.”
Yes, we’re all addicted to sin. We’re slaves to sin, serving ourselves instead of God, looking out for our own best interests, rather than following God and serving the best interests of our neighbors, of the least of these. We can’t get out of this, no matter how hard we try.
But thank God, Christ has set us free. God has come to do what we can’t.
If you listen to Christian radio, you might have heard a song by Chris Tomlin called White Flag. It talks about acknowledging that we cannot win this fight inside our rebel hearts. We can’t win our fight on our own. So, instead of trying to win on our own, we raise our white flag, we surrender all.
We surrender to God. That’s so counter-cultural, it almost seems like an un-American thing to say, especially on 4th of July weekend. We can’t win. We surrender. But that’s what we do as Christians. We recognize that we can’t beat our addiction to sin on our own and that we need to be rescued. And thanks be to God, we have been. Jesus’ yoke is easy, and his burden is light. In Christ, we find rest and freedom for our souls.
Amen.
And may the peace of God which passes all understanding, a peace that only God can give, a peace the world doesn’t understand, may that peace keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.