Sermon: No Babysitter, But Remember God's Grace

          Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.  In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

          Within the church year, we've experienced Advent through Epiphany, followed by Lent, and Easter through Pentecost.  During this time, people are learning, and being baptized or confirmed.  We're now entering the time when we focus on our ministries, on emulating Christ, and telling others about Christ.  We're back to the liturgy that tells us about the Gospel according to Luke, which we left back in Lent.  Today, though, we're going to discuss our responsibilities as Christians.

          It appears that according to Paul, we no longer need a babysitter.  Up until the time of Christ, Paul says the Law in the Greek, is our paidagogos. Some translations now render this as “guardian” of the young until they reach of age, but “babysitter” is certainly how it would have been termed today.  The babysitter was not the child’s parent or family member, but rather a trusted servant or slave.  But as a child grows, they happily anticipate that the babysitter will eventually go away, and not be permanently necessary. For any given human being, a babysitter is a temporary presence in a person’s life until a time of greater maturity is reached after which babysitters are no longer needed.

          So when Paul speaks in his letter to the Galatians, he states, " Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith."  It's great that we are now responsible for ourselves – and yet, are we truly ready?

          This New Testament passage today ends with inspiring words:  " There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise."  Paul points out how, now in Christ the old separations of sex, gender, legal status, and nationality are stripped away, washed away in the waters of baptism. We now have a unity and a freedom in Christ and in his overflowing grace that we could never have conceived of before.

          Here, though, in Paul's words, he's referring to all of life, not just religious life.  The concept of separating church and state won't occur for another 1700 years.  We, who live in a secular and pluralist society, are apt to misunderstand that here. An issue might be more directly religious—or political—but the two spheres were interlaced like warp and weft, not stitched along a seam. This is probably still truer than we realize today, but in any event, Paul's words are not some 'spiritual' declaration. They refer to the whole of reality. We can't exclude the political sphere from Paul's words.

          As Americans, we separate church from state, sometimes wanting to separate belief and morals from state as well.  As C.S. Lewis wrote, it is the easiest thing in the world to confuse fruit with root.  You can't see the roots of a tree but only the lovely peaches that grow above the soil on the tree’s branches. Of course, the fruit is so much easier to see that sooner or later its production becomes so fascinating that we forget about the roots. It’s the same with Christian work and keeping the law: what we do is visible on the surface of our lives. That it is all fueled by the roots of grace is harder to see and, therefore, to remember, and so sooner or later most of us are far more proud of the bumper crop of spiritual peaches we have produced than we are cognizant of the grace that alone made that possible in the first place.

          To invoke Lewis’ famous analogy: Suppose a 6-year-old boy asks his father to give him $5 to buy him a present. The father gives the boy the money and is then thrilled with the gift the little boy later brings to him. But, Lewis observes, only a fool would conclude the father came out $5 ahead on the transaction!

          If we don't receive the grace, the energy, the “money” from God in the first place, we’d have no spiritual work or fruits to give, and pleased though God is with our lives of discipleship, He never thinks that this is how we saved ourselves in the first place.

          When we look at the Old Testament reading today, the entirety of the passage in Isaiah is spoken by God.  Provided with the law, with God's Word, and watching as humankind continuously " walk in a way that is not good, they follow their own devices".  As a result, the Hebrew people experienced the consequences of turning away from God, because He " will measure into their laps full payment for their actions."  However, those who remained faithful, God says, "As the wine is found in the cluster, and they say, 'Do not destroy it, for there is a blessing in it,' so I will do for my servants’ sake, and not destroy them all."  Christians point out that an alternate translation of the ending of that passage reads, "I will bring forth a descendant from Jacob, and from Judah an inheritor of my mountains; my chosen shall inherit it, and my servants shall settle there."  We look at this passage as the promise from God that Jesus, the Christ will come to bring us out of adolescence, and into adulthood. 

          However with that adult status, we are now responsible – with help, thanks to the Holy Spirit – for how we see and treat all others.  We have more freedom, but we also have more responsibility to remember that without the grace provided by God, we have nothing.

          Let us pray:  Almighty God, whose loving hand hath given us all that we possess: Grant us grace that we may honor thee with our substance, and, remembering the account which we must one day give, may be faithful stewards of thy bounty, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.