Faith Focuses on Grace, Not Works
The Rev. Mark Sherwindt, Pastor
Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church
Pentecost 13: August 10, 2008
It's hard to know where to begin with this morning's texts. The First Lesson recounts that signature moment in Elijah's ministry when he retreated to Mt. Horeb to collect himself after a series of dangerous disappointments. “Lord, your people have forsaken the covenant, desecrated your altars, killed your prophets, and I alone am left, and they're coming after me!” He's frightened, shocked, angry, and, most of all, heading into panic mode at full speed. The Lord sends a great wind, so strong that the winds split the mountains and break the rocks into pieces; and after the wind, an earthquake; and after the earthquake, a fire. I don't know, but it doesn't sound like things are going all that well for Elijah. I chose our Opening Hymn with this text in mind, and verse 5 captures the challenge going through Elijah's mind just perfectly, lyrically, poetically.
Breathe through the heat of our desire Thy coolness and thy balm. (Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, Lutheran Book of Worship, #506)
Let sense be dumb; let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire.
O still small voice of calm!
I love that line, and there's no doubt but that it is taken right out of Elijah's encounter with God, where God didn't reveal Himself through the sound of a mighty wind, in the rumbling of the earthquake, through the pillar of fire or the cloud, but came to him in the sound of sheer silence, through the still small voice within. (Nick Cignetti is going to say more about our listening for God through that still small voice of calm during the Sunday School hour in Luther Hall. You ought to take the time, make the time, to join us. You'll be glad you did, and so will we, as we learn about listening for God and to God.
Well, it surely doesn't happen all that often that we find ourselves at the mountain's edge, facing the all-out assault of thunderous winds ripping the mountain apart and causing the ground beneath us to crumble, with fire breaking through from below and cracking the whip of thunder overhead. But it does sometimes happen that, with Elijah, we find ourselves feeling abandoned by God, with our antagonists coming together to surround us, as if to form the perfect storm; and that can be pretty frightening. That's kind of where Peter finds himself in our Gospel. “Jesus, don't you care that I'm about to go under? Save me, Lord, lest I perish right here in front of you!”
Unlike Peter, we're not very likely to jump out of the boat and into deep water just to test our faith. But like Peter, it is likely that we'll find ourselves in challenging circumstances, in troubled waters, with hostile forces surrounding us, antagonists who don't share our view of things , or perhaps oppose our views, and us, too, looking like they're just about ready to get the upper hand over us. So, we'll ask God for guidance and for help in doing the right thing, in walking the straight and narrow, keeping our character intact, and our cool before others. These are circumstances that are more likely for us, when it comes to talking about our being in some kind of trouble. Let's face it. It's not always easy to walk the line. Life doesn't always cooperate with our plans. People around us don't always conform to our hope for what we'd like them to be or what we need them to do. It is at times like these when we get that sinking feeling, and, like Peter, it's easy to become distracted by our challenges or our circumstances, and lose sight of Jesus. We stop focusing on what's important; and before we know it, we're knee-deep in trouble, and the water we thought we'd walk on is over our head.
So, there we are with Peter, and we're beginning to understand how he got the nickname the Rock, because he's sinking like one right to the bottom of that Galilean Sea! And we thought it was his rock-like faith! Of course, that's what makes Peter such an attractive figure in the Gospel. He's not perfect. He knows how to fail, and we can identify with that. In this chapter Peter is sinking like a rock in troubled waters. Two chapters out, in Matthew 16:16, he's the Rock upon which Christ will build the church.
What I find troubling about our Gospel is not the deep water in which Peter finds himself. That's troubling, but Jesus is there to reach out and help, and he does, saving Peter from sinking, and commanding the winds to cease and the waves to become calm. What I find troubling is the way Jesus talks about Peter's faith being relatively weak, comparatively littler than it ought to be. I'm troubled by that because it seems to suggest that we can make our faith stronger, and that we'd be better off if we improved, got better at believing and trusting and focusing on Jesus. All of that is true, but not all that helpful. Part of the trouble is that Jesus doesn't bother to tell Peter how to make his faith stronger, or to prescribe exercises that could insure measurable progress. I'm troubled, too, because our Second Lesson, argues against this notion that the size of our faith, little or large, is the key to gaining access to what Jesus promises, namely, salvation.
This is a classic, historic debate in Christianity. It was a debate that defined the life of the early Church, pitting its major proponents, Paul and Peter, against each other. When Paul encountered the Risen Christ, he met a Lord who did more than change his name from Saul to Paul, more even than to change his life from persecuting Christians to becoming one. Paul saw that Jesus changed everything about the world of religion, about how we understand and gain access to the salvation God promises. The key for Paul is faith, but not as a quality in us - strong or weak, little or large. Faith for Paul was not an invitation to focus on us. Faith is a conceptual key that directs our focus to God's grace. Paul saw that in Christ the entire world of religion changed. That's the point of our Second Lesson. Christ is the end of the law. Grace now reigns. We are no longer saved by works of the law. God has done what we could not. He has given His Son in death, and that gift, that gracious gift, holds the key to the new life God gives, the true life God promises. The gift of His Son proclaims God's love so completely, so perfectly, so powerfully, that there's nothing left to do except acknowledge God's grace, accept God's mercy, and recognize that these qualities, these gifts, flow from the depth of His being. God's grace does it all. God's grace is altogether and in every respect sufficient to make salvation possible, and actual, as a promise that awaits us at the end of time, and as a presence embracing our lives right here and now. Faith, as Paul uses it - the word of faith we proclaim, the faith we confess with our lips and believe in our hearts - is not about how firmly we believe, as if we are talking in degrees. It is not about the strength of our belief. It signals the arrival of the new age, the creation of a new religious system for understanding and accessing the salvation God promises.
This was the point of a 1979 600-page magnum opus by E.P. Sanders entitled Paul and Palestinian Judaism, which argued that Paul wasn't making a point within Judaism, or an argument against Judaism. He understood that Jesus, the Risen Christ, had set a whole new course, created a whole new way to salvation. Salvation is no longer about the law given through Moses because it is grounded in the gracious initiative God has taken, the gracious love God has given, through the crucified Christ, our Risen Lord. Peter had not yet seen this as he struggled to keep from sinking to the bottom of the sea. But this is the point Paul is making with our Second Lesson. Grace is the ground of salvation, and faith is the acknowledgment that accesses this great gift God gives. There is now no distinction between Jew and Greek, not simply because we're all sinners, but because Jesus is Lord. The resurrection made that clear, once and for all. The resurrection declared that God is gracious, and he is gracious to all who call upon him. For everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Faith for Peter is more like the challenge of focusing on Jesus more clearly, following Jesus more nearly, trusting Jesus more dearly, in the sense that there are degrees of faithfulness that are evident by looking at the believer. Paul is trying to get us to see that in Christ something has radically changed. Everything has radically changed, and not simply in us, but in the way God delivers on His promise of salvation, by grace through faith, and not by works of the law. Paul is trying to help us see that focusing on ourselves, how we're doing, is the problem. Focusing on ourselves is precisely what keeps us from focusing on what faith requires. It's just plain misguided to fix our focus on how we're doing, rather that on what God has already done in and through Christ. Faith calls us to be Christ-centered rather than self-centered. Faith calls us to be God-confident rather than self-confident. For Paul, faith is not about what is happening in us, but what has happened in Christ on the Cross. I love the First Lesson, which invites us to listen for God, as God comes to us through the still small voice within. I love that Gospel, which introduces us to one aspect of Peter the rock, not the rock upon which Jesus will build his church, but a rock we can identify with. But our focus today should be on the Second Lesson and Paul's use of the word faith as the conceptual key to a new religious system inaugurated by the reign of God's grace, which is the life of the kingdom of God breaking into our world, and into our lives, as we look to our Lord and focus on the grace God has given, which is ours … in Jesus' name. Amen