A vicar’s daughter watched her father preparing a sermon. “How do you know what to say?” she asked. “God tells me”, he replied. “Then why do you keep crossing things out?”
There are various sorts of sermons, and today I want to try to preach a traditional text. This differs from a Theme sermon (today we will look at the theme of Giving), or an Expositional sermon (today we are going to expound Philippians 2, verse by verse, clause by sub-clause).
In Romans 10: 9 Paul says “If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Paul has never been to Rome. All through his letter to the church there, Paul has been talking about faith as the foundation of our relationship with God, and here he summarises the whole thing in one verse. It does not matter if you come to church regularly or hardly at all, if you come from the chosen race or not, know your bible inside out or are just starting to explore what it says, feel you are living a good moral upright life – or not .... All that matters is that you publically declare your faith in Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that he has been raised from the dead. Everything else will follow from that.
This is a good text to preach here at St Michael’s at St Michael’s tide. Everything we do is shaped by our desire to Encounter God and Grow in Him – both for ourselves and to help others. Each of us is on a journey of exploration and discovery, but the turning point comes when we encounter God in his Son Jesus Christ, when we see how this historical life lived 2,000 years ago has a direct relevance to our own lives today.
There are many ways that we can be led to this encounter. Some of these are stories we were told in Sunday School, reading the bible, singing hymns, or being a member of a local Christian community. Some of us have found that life-events, both happy and sad, have drawn us closer to God, while others have found they have made us question, doubt, and feel further away from faith.
A key factor is our response to Creation and the beauty of nature all around us. Paul goes so far as to say that the inner state of our hearts and minds towards God is revealed by the way that we respond to all that he has created.
We read in Romans 1: 18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
This is why Harvest is so important. It is our opportunity to remember where all our good things come from, and to give thanks to God who has so richly blessed us. I love the nature programmes on television, and the stories about all that we discover about genetics, string-theory, the exploration of space, the amazing way that life has developed here on earth. I love to hear about true scientists, whose minds are open as they seek to understand the mysteries of creation. I fear for those who say, in effect, we have explained it all (or are confident that we will soon be able to), and we do not see any room for God in that picture. They are, I am sure, good and moral people, but in denying the Creator, they are claiming the right to think as God for themselves; they are repeating the folly and sin of Adam and Eve in the garden, and they are starting on a road to ruin that will lead unstoppably to a denial of all that God is, and to all the evils and cruelties of our world today. G. K. Chesterton said “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing – they believe in anything.” To be thankful is to express faith. If Jesus is the whole of the pyramid, and faith in his cross and resurrection are the pinnacle, then the broad base is to value and give thanks for all that he has created. To do anything less is to walk in to find a tidied house and beautifully prepared meal, and say “O, that’s a stroke of luck!”
So, to confess that Jesus is Lord is to acknowledge him in every part of our lives and to see his hand in everything around us. It is to marvel that, as we read in Philippians 2, his Lordship derives from a humble obedient heart that laid aside the privileges of equality with his Father and became actually part of the creation. This is a greater mystery than the science we discussed before. He humbled himself even to death, the ultimate degradation that we find in the created order, but he also was raised as living human body and is in the heavenlies right now praying for us.
The point of this is that Jesus is acknowledged as Lord – the one that we obey. We believe in the God of creation, whose Son Jesus died for us and rose again, and we find ourselves therefore obeying him. Anything less than this is to acknowledge him as a teacher or a moral example, or someone to be respected. But, Paul says, what flows from this is a loving life that puts others first, where God is at work helping us to be no longer conformed to a rebellious world system that does not acknowledge God, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, so that we may prove what the will of God is for us, and do it.
In this short treatment I am not able to address all the questions that spring from this; that is what our different groups give us an opportunity to do, and you are warmly invited to join us at one of them. One question, however, is what about those who do not confess Jesus as Lord, or believe in his resurrection? What about those who make themselves subject to wrath?
Looking at our gospel passage, we can see that there are those who are determined to be, in effect, their own Lords, and they have made up their minds. It does not matter if a prophet like John or the saviour himself comes to them; they already know an answer that suits them. But Jesus goes straight on to tell the story of a son who changes his mind and decides to fall in with his father’s wishes. In the same way the invitation is for each and every one of us this morning, to confess that Jesus Is Lord and to trust him in our hearts; let us ask God for the gift of faith and understanding, so that we may be truly open for all that he has for us, and encounter him for ourselves.
Discussion Questions
1. Jesus is Lord: what impact does this have on your daily life?
2. How would disbelieving in God as Creator lead to disobedience and evil living?
3. If a particular culture or belief system suggested that you do something wrong, how would you respond in the light of Paul’s teaching?
4. How might the resurrection of Jesus lead us to re-evaluate the whole of creation and our place within it?
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