Sermon from November 10

The time is ticking down.  We’ve changed our clocks back an hour, and you’ve probably noticed that it’s getting dark outside a lot earlier.  The cool weather has set in, and Christmas has fully invaded stores already.  We have a mere month and a half left in this year 2013.  And we have even less in the way that the Christian Church keeps track of the calendar.  We’re already in the last month of that unique thing that we call the Christian Church Calendar, a strange thing that typically begins in December with the season of Advent, and concludes in late November with a Sunday called, very creatively, the Last Sunday of the Church Year, or perhaps at times a bit more creatively, Christ the King Sunday.

And during these last few weeks of the Christian Church Calendar year, we start to hear about the time when Jesus will re-appear.  I both love and dread this time of year.  I love it because we’re reminded about the hope that we have in our Christian faith.  Christ Jesus will re-appear and will usher in the eternal kingdom completely.  It won’t just be something that is promised to us through what Jesus did on the cross and the resurrection, which He has given to us by virtue of our baptism, but it will become the reality in which we live.  I love that reminder as we approach that Sunday where we remember His promise to re-appear.

But I also dread this time of year a bit.  I dread it because, as we hear about Jesus re-appearing, I also start to hear all the different “thoughts” that are out there about what the time of Jesus’ re-appearing will be like.  I dread it because there are some really poorly thought out theologies out there, and very few that truly hold to the biblical picture of Jesus’ return.  I dread it because so many want the quick and easy answer to what the Bible teaches about such things, but the truth is, you simply can’t cover some of those topics very quickly or easily, and so they tend to remain misunderstood.  Biblically, it’s a lot more simple than many of the thoughts that are out there, but it still takes time to work through what the Bible says.

But the end of the Christian Church Calendar year is also significant to the topic we’ve been covering this fall.  We’ve been spending some time thinking about the conflicts we have in life, and what God has to say about how we handle our conflicts.  We’ve touched on what the root of these conflicts is, and we’ve repeatedly heard the importance of forgiveness and restoration.  The re-appearing of Jesus is a reminder that there is a time coming when all conflict will truly come to an end.  Even our conflict with sin and death will come to an end.  We will be in the gracious presence of our God, and will stay there forever.  The re-appearing of Jesus is a reminder that conflict is temporary.  It will come to an end.

However, until that actual day arrives when Jesus re-appears in glory and brings His people into their eternal inheritance, we still have to deal with conflict in our lives.  Day by day, conflict will come up, and we will have to find ways of dealing with it.  It still needs to be dealt with as it comes up in life, and how we deal with it actually does say a lot about who we are, especially as people of God in Christ Jesus.  Especially as people who have been given the rich gift of forgiveness, and who have been sent, as Jesus Himself was sent, with forgiveness on our lips, eager to pass it on to every person we encounter in life.

Now, today, we heard a couple of interesting Bible readings already.  The first one is one that is probably a somewhat familiar story to many of you here.  It’s the story of Moses and the burning bush.  Moses was born in Egypt at a time when the Israelite male children were to be killed.  Instead, his mother hid him in a basket and put him in the river, where he was found by Pharoah’s daughter.  He was raised in the royal house until he saw a fellow Israelite being beaten by an Egyptian taskmaster.  After killing the Egyptian, Moses ran away into the wilderness.  For the next forty years, he became a shepherd.  But all that changed the day that he was watching the sheep and encountered the burning bush.

The bush was on fire, but didn’t burn.  Strange enough of an occurrence for Moses to go check it out.  And then, a voice spoke out of the fire.  God was calling Moses to free his people, something Moses had already tried once to less than stellar results.  But this time, God would be with him.  And Moses wanted to know the name of this God.  “What’s your name?  Who shall I say you are to the people?”  And God gives Moses a very memorable name.

I AM who I AM.  The LORD, the God of your fathers, of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has sent you.  This is my name, and ya’ll will remember it forever.”  And at the root of God’s name that He gives to Moses, we have a great deal of meaning.  The very name of God is the verb of existence.  It’s like He is telling Moses, I am the God who actually is, who actually exists.  I am the living God.  I am the God who truly does exist and have life.

And we see that same connection to the living God mentioned in our Bible reading from Luke 20.  The Sadducees, a group of theologians in Jesus’ time who claimed that the resurrection was merely a spiritual event, came to Jesus with their puzzle.  The seven brothers all married the same woman, according to their custom.  So in the resurrection, whose wife is she?  And that’s when Jesus reminds them of who God is.  He’s not the God of the dead, but of the living.  He is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, who are still alive and still exist.  He is the living God of the living.

Ours is a God who is a living God.  We see that in the Father, who has existed even before time began.  We see that in the Son, who lives even though He was crucified and died with your sins and your conflicts.  You’ve been washed clean through His resurrection, and through your baptism, you have a connection to His new, everlasting life, a gift which is yours by virtue of your baptism.  Your God is the living God, and He is the God of the living, which includes you, as you live your life in this world, and as you take up your eternal life in His eternal kingdom.

And since God is a God of the living, He takes a very personal interest in your living.  He takes an intimate interest in how you live your life.  And that means He takes a very personal interest in how you handle your conflicts, and in how you handle the precious pearl of forgiveness.  Because God in Christ Jesus has seen fit to take away your sins, to bear them in His body on the cross, and to rise again to new life, and to connect you to that new life through your baptism, God has a very great interest in how you go about living your life.

After all, you belong to the living God.  The living God is the God of the living, and He has not only given you life in this world, but already planted the eternal life within you in your baptism.  Every breath you take is a gift of grace from the living God.  Every day that you awaken is a gift of grace from the living God.  And since He is the God of the living, He wants each day and each breath to be one in which you breathe out grace and forgiveness in your life.  And that’s the very thing that the new life in you wants to do, in response to God’s living grace to you.

That’s why we make much about the life we live as Christians.  God is the God of the living.  God is the living God.  When Jesus re-appears, He’s going to usher all who have received their eternal life into the eternal kingdom.  And while we look forward to that hope, we also recognize that our lives in this world actually have a great deal of impact on that eternal world which is yet to be fully realized.

That’s why God’s people live out each day in their baptism, and in their baptismal grace.  That’s why you and I live as people of the living God.  We live as a people who have been forgiven.  We know and believe that Christ Jesus has taken our sin into His very own body, bearing it into death on the cross, and then overcoming it by rising back to life.  Our living Savior has forgiven us, fully and completely.  No sin stands in the way of our relationship with our God, and so we live as a people who are forgiven.

Having been forgiven much, we rejoice in our connection with God.  Since we are a forgiven people, we then connect with our community by living as a people who are a forgiving people.  Since God can overcome our sin and forgive it through the cross and resurrection of Jesus, we can overcome the sin of conflict that crops up among us and between us and others by offering that same forgiveness.  We forgive their sin against us, and we announce the origin of that forgiveness in what God has done for us in Jesus.  We strive to live as forgiving people because we have been richly forgiven.

And we live as people who are living people.  Not only do we have life while we live in this world, but we are also people who have been given the victory.  Through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, our great enemies have been defeated.  Satan has been defeated already, and we rejoice that God has done that for us in Jesus.  Death has been defeated, its jaws broken when Jesus came back to life, and we rejoice that God has connected us to that victory in our baptism.  Our sin has been defeated when Jesus died with it, and we rejoice that God has taken our sin away from us.  And so we live as a people who have the victory.  Our sin, our enemy the devil, and even death don’t win.  Our God has already won the victory, and so we live as people who already have the victory.  We don’t hang our heads in defeat, but know that we are in Christ Jesus, and so we have the victory.

And since we have the assurance of that victory, we also live as gracious people.  We don’t think poorly or badly of others because we see how highly our living God has thought of us.  He sees us of value enough to be our living God, and to make us His living, forgiven people.  And so we look at every person we meet with new eyes, with gracious eyes.  We don’t think poorly of them, but think graciously of them.  We don’t treat them with contempt, or even necessarily give them what they deserve, but we treat them graciously, just as our living God has treated us graciously.

That’s what it means to have a living God, who is God of the living.  And with that new birth in us because of our baptism, we pray that God grows us in grace, in victory, and in forgiveness every day, until the day when Jesus re-appears and ushers in the eternal kingdom.  And till that day, our cry remains, “Amen! Come Lord Jesus!  Amen.”