Who will save your souls? A sermon for the 14th Sunday After Pentecost (St. John Luana)

Who will Save Your Soul?

So many options out there that promise salvation from the world and its woes...

In the words of pop singer, Jewel:

Who will save your soul when it comes to the very very end
Who will save your soul after all the lies that you told, boy
Who will save your soul if you won't save you own?

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime,
Therefore, we are saved by hope.
Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history;
Therefore, we are saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone.
Therefore, we are saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite a virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own;
Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness. Reinhold Niebuhr

"Say to those who are fearful of heart, Be strong and do no fear! Hear is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you."

Salvation unto us has come - yet do we believe it? In the midst of incredible changes all around us - be it the current crisis facing the family dairy farm, the unsettled markets, the job losses, the rise in family violence and divorce. When will the day of salvation come? Will the Lord act?

"Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped." God acts as we hear it in the first lesson and in the Gospel. Where will you put your trust?

Applying the Word to Daily Life

1. Salvation is possible!
1. The London firemen's strike of 1978 made possible one of the great animal rescue attempts of all time. Valiantly, the British Army had taken over emergency fire fighting and on January 14 they were called out by an elderly lady in South London to retrieve her cat which had become trapped up a tree. They arrived with impressive haste and soon discharged their duty. So grateful was the lady that she invited them all in for tea. Driving off later, with fond farewells completed, they ran over the cat and killed it.
   
2. ²⁵but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. ²⁶Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. ²⁷He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” ²⁸But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” ²⁹Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” ³⁰So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone. ³¹Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. ³²They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. ³³He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. ³⁴Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” ³⁵And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.
3. Out of what seems impossible Jesus breaks free the one held in prison by demons, heals the sick, opens the eyes of the blind - what could he do for you?
   
4. With such a possibility happening before their eyes they could not contain their joy. Jesus ordered them to tell no one about this amazing event that happened before their eyes - yet even so the more zealously proclaim it.
5. What keeps us from zealously proclaiming the work of the Lord to bring about salvation in our lives? How God has taken the impossible and made life possible?
   
2. Salvation is for all!

   2My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? ²For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, ³and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit at my feet,” ⁴have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? ⁵Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? ⁶But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? ⁷Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?

   ⁸You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” ⁹But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.
1. Can we show partiality when Christ calls us to love God and love neighbor without limits? It is tough stuff to love our neighbor and equate it with our love for God.
   
2. ⁸You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” ⁹But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. ¹⁰For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. ¹¹For the one who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. ¹²So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. ¹³For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.
3. Even more we must be ready to share the story of God's amazing, tangible, real presence in Word and Sacrament in this place St. John Lutheran. To be beaming with the light of Christ ready to point others in our community to the place where the life-giving presence of God is found.
4. We can be consumed by the ins and outs of defining boundaries. To the sinner, to all sinners - . 21 So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
3. Salvation compels us to act!
1. ¹⁴What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? ¹⁵If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, ¹⁶and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? ¹⁷So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
2. 'Do not waste your time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less." C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.
3. Who stands firm? Only the one for whom the final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all these, when in faith and sole allegiance to God he is called to obedient and responsible action: the responsible person, whose life will be nothing but an answer to God's question and call. Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
4. The Lord who has set this captive free from sin is the same Lord that has sent us out to "go and do likewise."
   

You are facing a new day as a congregation. How can we communicate the Gospel confidently in these days ahead?

• Build up your leadership through daily prayer.
  
• Strive in all things to increase ways of communication.
• Love each other and live by the law of love.
• Act in ways of service and be "doers and hearers of the Word.