The Second
Sunday of Pentecost
Opening Prayer
As you go,
proclaim the good news, the kingdom of heaven has come near. (Matthew 10:7)
God of the prophets and apostles, you greeted old Abraham and Sarah with news of wonder and life. Send us into the world to preach good news, as Jesus did, heal the sick, resist evil, and bring the outcast home. Amen. (Revised Common Lectionary Prayers)
Opening Hymn – Here I am, Lord
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
And also with you.
The Gloria
Collect of the Day
Let us pray.
Almighty God,
without you we are not able to please you. Mercifully grant that your Holy
Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our
Lord, who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Readings
A reading from
the Book of Genesis 18:1-15
The
Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his
tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him.
When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to
the ground. He said, “My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your
servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves
under the tree. Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves,
and after that you may pass on – since you have come to your servant.” So they
said, “Do as you have said.” And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and
said, “Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make
cakes.” Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it
to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. Then he took curds and milk and the
calf that he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under
the tree while they ate.
They
said to him, “Where is your wife Sarah?” And he said, “There, in the tent.”
Then one said, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah
shall have a son.” And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him. Now
Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah
after the manner of women. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I have
grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?” The Lord said to
Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that
I am old?’ Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? At the set time I will
return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.” But Sarah denied,
saying, “I did not laugh”; for she was afraid. He said, “Oh yes, you did
laugh.”
The word of the Lord.
Thanks be the God.
Psalm 116:1, 10-17
A reading from the Letter of Paul to the Romans 5:1-8
Therefore,
since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand;
and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we
also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and
endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not
disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the
Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
For
while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good
person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in
that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.
The word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Gradual Hymn – Come to Jesus
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
The Holy
Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew. 9:35-10:8
Glory to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
Then
Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and
proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every
sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were
harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his
disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask
the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
Then
Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean
spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. These
are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and
his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and
Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and
Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.
These
twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Go nowhere among the
Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep
of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of
heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast
out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.
The Gospel of Christ.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
Sermon
Paul the Christian was once
Saul the Jew. Not only that, he was a Pharisee and a persecutor of the early
Christian movement. Before he was a Christian Apostle, Paul was a Jewish
Missionary on behalf of the synagogue mission to the Gentiles.
The goal of Jewish mission
work was to convert Gentiles to Judaism and it was based firmly in Mosaic law. The
law was the means by which one and all participated in the salvific covenant
with God. Thus it was a natural reaction on the part of Judaism to combat any
threat to the law.
Early Christianity, with its
proclamation of a certified Messiah, posed not only a threat in competing for
converts within and without the synagogue, it proclaimed an absolute contrast
between the Messiah and the law. Paul would have reflected upon the
relationship between Christ and the law and would have seen the sheer
incompatibility as clearly as did anyone in the first century. It was this
conflict between Christ and the law that would have motivated Paul’s persecution
of early Christians.
So what caused Paul to convert
from Judaism to Christianity? By his own account, Paul’s experience was less a
conversion than a prophetic call. In Galatians, Paul’s experience sounds more
like Jeremiah’s than a description of a conversion from one religion to
another:
“God who had set me apart from
my mother’s womb, and had called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal
his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles.”
Nowhere in Paul’s writings
does he reveal disappointment in his past life in Judaism. In fact, he often
speaks about his past with pride, as in his letters to the Galatians, the
Philippians, and in his second letter to the Corinthians. Paul claims that he
now has a new perspective on the conflict between Christ and the law. This new
understanding of the conflict between the crucified Christ and the law and
having had the risen Christ revealed to him by God, called Paul to be an
apostle to the Gentiles.
On occasion during his
ministry, questions were raised about the gospel Paul preached and the
legitimacy of his apostleship. This happened dramatically in Galatia and
Corinth. When such questions were raised, Paul was able to defend his message
and his apostleship emphatically because both extended from his call, which was
a result of the revelation of the risen Jesus Christ to him, which was an act
of God.
Thus to question Paul’s gospel
or apostleship was to question his call; and to question his call was to
question the revelation of the risen Lord; and to question that revelation was
to question God!
Paul’s self-understanding was
that he had been called in order to be sent throughout the world he knew to
preach the good news, or gospel, of what God had done and was doing through
Jesus Christ. In modern terms, he claims to have preached from Israel through
Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and Greece, going as far as Bulgaria, Albania, and
Yugoslavia.
How could one man possibly do
all of that in a short 25 years? Two words – team work.
Paul’s letters reveal that he
coordinated the activity of an organized band of missionaries. He would move
with a group of seasoned missionary colleagues to the capital city of a Roman
province. They would seek out places to preach their gospel and would gather
any Christians who already lived there and incorporate them into the missionary
enterprise, thereby expanding Paul’s staff.
While Paul seemed to have
stayed in the capital city, his fellow workers would spread out into other
cities, towns, and villages in order to establish new congregations. Paul would
remain in one location until they were established, for example he stayed in
Corinth for a year and Ephesus for 2, and then he would move on to the next
region.
But Paul never lost contact
with any of the churches that he founded. He even paid checkup visits to the
churches if he deemed it necessary. More often though, he used letter-writing
as part of his missionary strategy, employing the written communication, like a
modern Bishop’s letter, to influence and build up the congregations he
addressed.
These were not casual letters
or simple friendly communications. Paul wrote his letters to address specific
situations that existed in particular churches. With his letters, he sought to
extend his influence in order to assure desired results. For Paul, the letter
was an instrument of his apostleship.
Throughout the summer weeks (less
one quick venture into his letter to the Philippians next week), we will be
hearing specifically from Paul’s letter to the Romans. In many ways, this
letter is distinct from Paul’s other letters.
It is addressed to a church
founded neither by Paul nor one of his missionary colleagues. Moreover, Paul
had never visited this community of Christians. So then why did he write this
letter?
There are two schools of
thought. The first being that in Romans Paul is occupied primarily with his own
concerns. Some scholars claim that Romans is Paul’s last will and testament,
providing a summary of his theology and practical positions.
The second school of thought
is that Paul is occupied primarily with the concerns of the Roman church. It is
claimed that Paul wrote Romans to deal with the Jew/Gentile issue in Rome that
had become a serious problem. With the expulsion of Jewish Christians, the
church was left in the hands of the Gentile Christians. Paul may have written
Romans to prepare Rome for his planned visit to provide the church with an
apostolic foundation.
Perhaps the truth lies
somewhere in between, with Paul concerned both with passing on his theology in
a written testament as well as wanting to deal with the heated situation
developing in Rome.
Ultimately, Paul’s motives for
writing his letter to the Romans appears to be based in his desire to establish
Rome as a Christian base in the West as he did with Antioch in the East. In his
letter to Rome, Paul desires to lay out his gospel and its relevance for the
believers in Rome. Paul’s letter is an introduction of himself and his message.
One of the key pieces of
Paul’s message is that God justifies sinners by faith in Christ’s death
because, by that death, God dealt with sin once and for all. This justification
by faith is precisely what’s being spoken about in today’s reading.
I think that today’s reading
started one verse too late though. Did you notice that the reading started with
“therefore”? That tells me there must be an important thought stated previously
of which today’s reading is a conclusion.
Here is Chapter 4, verse 25:
“who was
handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.”
There are two very important facts in this verse:
1 – Christ
was delivered up to death for our trespasses
2 – Jesus was raised for our
justification
Both the death and
resurrection of Christ are key elements in the sacred program enacted for
humanity’s salvation.
The noun justification and the
verb justify occur a total of 85 times in Paul’s letters so one can safely say
that justification is an important topic to Paul.
To clarify, justification is
the legal standing that results from the process of being justified. To say
that one is justified from sin is not to claim that they are innocent of the
crime. Rather the term suggests that the offender has been exempted from the
penalty they justly deserve.
The issue is this: how can God
be just and yet justify sinners? The answer is found in the gift of Christ. God
set forth God’s Son as an offering of atonement, a covering for sin. The
sinless Lamb of God takes the penalty for the sinful individual who submits to
the conditions imposed by the judge, God.
According to Paul, the
sinner’s faith is essential to their justification. But their faith in what? In
whom? Is this merely the willingness of the sinner to accept the historical
facts about Christ, and the surrender of one’s soul to trust the Lord for his
salvation?
In his letter to the Romans,
Paul affirms that the goal of justification is to have peace with God. In the
secular world, peace basically suggests the absence of war. But in biblical
terms, peace signifies well-being, health, completeness, and safety.
In the sense of the passage we
heard today, peace is a state of being, not a mere emotion. Unfortunately, too
many people have an emotional sense of peace while still at war with God. And
sadly, others who are at peace with God still search for peace of mind!
Justification and peace with
God are available only through Christ. It is also through Christ that we are
able to access the grace of God. When we think of Christ’s death for our sin,
we think only that He has forgiven our sin, but Paul is saying something far
greater:
God
actually credited to us Jesus’ righteousness.
To use a financial analogy,
not only was our debt covered, but we were awarded a billion dollars! What
makes this all the more amazing is that it’s given to us as a gift. We didn’t
earn it, but received it by faith.
The people in Paul’s audience
would have been astounded to hear of this gift. They were steeped in the belief
that one is justified, or righteous, only by observing every letter of the
Mosaic Law.
Paul’s mission with his letter
to the Romans was to prove to the skeptics that people are declared righteous
by faith, not by how well they followed the law. If you believe in God, then
God will find you righteous, or justified.
Is it our obedience that makes
us right with God? No! When we turn to God and by faith accept what God
reveals, the miraculous atonement by Christ’s death puts us into a right
relationship with God. As a result of the miracle of God’s grace, we stand
justified, not because we are sorry for our sins or because we have repented,
but because of what Jesus has done and by his sacrificial death.
Why is justification by faith
so important?
Justification is the act of God forgiving our sins and
giving us the righteousness of Christ.
Justification is not earned by our works, it is given to us
through the gift of Christ.
Justification is the completed work of God and frees us
from the guilt of sin.
It is justification that assures us our salvation and the
gift of eternal life.
The message of justification
by faith is that we don’t have to earn our ticket to heaven, we already have it
in hand. There is no ritual, no sacrament, no deed that can make us worthy of
the righteousness of Christ and of God. It is only by God’s grace, in response
to our faith, that God has credited to us the holiness of Jesus Christ and the
gift of eternal life.
While we are still sinners,
God meets us in Jesus and brings us home. In our faith in Jesus’ death and
resurrection, God restores us to life and gives us grace.
In our justification by faith, we are at peace with God.
Go forth and spread the good news.
Affirmation of Faith
Let us confess
the faith of our baptism, as we say the Apostles’ Creed:
The Prayers of the People
(From the book of
Intercessions for the Christian People)
Let us pray.
Made righteous through faith in Christ, asking that we may be faithful to the gift of God’s grace, let us now pray to our God in the power of the Spirit, saying: Lord, hear our prayer.
For the church, that in our prayer we may stand ready, as the Lord wills, to carry out and accomplish the very prayer we utter, let us pray to the Lord. Lord, hear our prayer.
That the urgency of God’s word of blessing or curse will shatter our spirit of equivocation and compromise and our easy tolerance of expediency and injustice, let us pray to the Lord. Lord, hear our prayer.
For those who bear the responsibility of government in every nation, that they may build upon the solid rock of truth and justice, and not upon the sands of self-interest and pride, let us pray to the Lord. Lord, hear our prayer.
That the word of Christ may become the deepest joy of our hearts, and may move us to deeds which reflect Christ’s ministry of reconciliation, let us pray to the Lord. Lord, hear our prayer.
For all in the human community who cry out because of injustice, oppression, illness, or isolation, that we may hear in them the cry of Christ himself suffering in all humanity, let us pray to the Lord. Lord, hear our prayer.
For the departed, that they may continue to support us with their love in the communion of saints, let us pray to the Lord. Lord, hear our prayer.
Please take time to offer your own intercessions or to pray in silence.
Eternal and compassionate God, receive and fulfill all that we ask according to your will. Give us the grace to welcome your word who is Christ, that we may live grounded on the rock of your love and mercy, now and all our days. We ask this through Christ, our Saviour and Redeemer. Amen.
Gathering our prayers together, let us pray as Christ has taught us,
Our Father, who art in heaven,Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
Save us from the time of trial,
And deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
The power, and the glory,
For ever and ever. Amen.
Confession and Absolution
Dear friends
in Christ,
God is
steadfast in love and infinite in mercy; God welcomes sinners and invites them
to the table. Let us confess our sins, confident in God’s forgiveness.
(Silence)
Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against
you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left
undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our
neighbour as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake
of your son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us, that we might
delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your name. Amen.
Almighty God, have mercy upon you, pardon and deliver you from all your sins, confirm and strengthen you in all goodness, and keep you in eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The peace of the Lord be always with you.
And also with you.
Prayer over the Gifts
**Although not physically at our church buildings to share
our offering together I would encourage you to set your offering of money aside
so that it can be dropped off or placed in the church once services resume, to
mail your offering to the church, or to make donations online. Please remember
ministry is still taking place.
Let us pray.
God of
reconciliation and forgiveness, the saving work of Christ has made our peace
with you. May that work grow toward its perfection in all we offer you this
day. We ask this in his name. Amen.
Doxology
Glory to God,
Whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to God from generation to generation, in the Church and in Christ Jesus, for ever and ever. Amen.
Blessing
The blessing
of almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be upon you now and always. Amen.
Closing Hymn – Make Me a Channel of Your Peace
Dismissal
Go forth into the world, rejoicing in the
power of the Spirit.
Thanks be
to God.
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