As Beggars

These, the last words of Martin Luther on his deathbed, are very appropriate as a summary of much of his thinking, and serve as an apt comment upon the Gospel today.

Let's draw the picture of a beggar: hand out...not too clean...smelly...poorly dressed...deserving nothing...looking very out of place in the company of polite society.

We are like that???

What could Luther mean?

Why would he say that?

Remember that this statement comes from one of the most widely known and influential persons of his day.

He was known and loved (or despised, depending on your point of view) by rulers and church officials all across Europe.

Why would he compare himself and us with beggars?

I can vividly remember one woman who walked around Harrisburg years ago, who had all of her possessions in a shopping cart topped by a dog.

She was dressed in the rags of the fashions of decades earlier, her face smeared with rouge and lipstick.

She wandered all around the city in any kind of weather, surviving somehow, suspicious of anyone who tried to help.

It is precisely because of the beggar's unloveliness, unworthiness, undeserving the attention of others that Luther pulls the comparison.

In our relationship with God, we are exactly in that same position.

All of our Sunday finery are castoff rags in comparison with the glory of God.

All of our efforts to appear good and successful to him reek of the sweat of fruitless work which we have tried to mask with the cheap perfume of good intentions.

That's us, says Luther.

Our efforts at being pretentious are merely pathetic.

The image used by Jesus may seem gentle at first hearing, but it is just as pointed.

“Whoever does not receive the kingdom as a child shall not enter it.”

In the past, the passage has been used to directly support infant baptism, though a direct connection is surely inappropriate.

Jesus is not talking particularly about Baptism, but about our relationship with God in general.

It is as a small child who cannot do much of anything.

Even though they try mightily, “goo” does not make a fully expressive language.

The waving of arms and legs does not move the body.

Only with our hands out and our mouth open to receive are we able to survive as a young child, and also as an adult!

We wake up in the morning and receive the gift of a new day, without doing anything to deserve it.

Try as hard as we will, we cannot earn God's love and care; he is already doing it far more abundantly than we know.

When God stands in judgment over the mess we make of our lives, we are in big trouble, as the hymn says:”No merit of my own I claim, but wholly lean of Jesus' name.”

We can only be reconciled to God because Jesus speaks for us, undeserving as we are.

All of this is descriptive of a $10 word which we as Lutherans especially like to use: justification.

Trouble is, we get the free gift nature of justification mixed up with another part of our lives as Christians, the response side, the sanctification.

Upon hearing that we can do nothing to earn God's favor, altogether too many of us resolve … to do nothing!

When that is the situation, we are in effect turning in a blank commitment card, and limiting our involvement, perhaps to an occasional Sunday morning.

This is just as foolish now as when the Corinthians and others tried that tactic so many centuries ago.

The goals that the individuals and committees have suggested which the council are chewing on a bit at a time, together with the commitment cards we all can use in two weeks, are not to be used to prove something to God, or how noble we are, or how deserving of his attention.

That would be utterly futile.

We seek out opportunities for responding to God because of his love for us.

(1)Today we celebrate the efforts of our quilting group over the past year, and send their work out with prayer that it might be helpful to someone in need somewhere around the world, and maybe, just maybe drawn to find out something about the God who inspires our work.

(2)Since we know that the song of heaven is promised to be our song someday, there is good reason for us to want to be present for worship in order to rehearse that song, to get a flavor of how things will finally be truly what they have always been intended by God to be.

(3)The opportunities for studying God's word are multiplied, with Sunday school classes for all the various ages, Thursday morning for men at 6:31, for anyone at noon on Wednesdays year-round, on Wednesday afternoons in October...and when there is call for it, we'll invent other opportunities.

Nothing can be put into a closed fist; nothing can enter a closed mind; nothing can excite an absent ear.

(4)Sharing the blessings that we are learning to recognize is a logical next step.

We have the CROP walk next Sunday,

the collection for the area food pantries also next Sunday,

our Consecration Sunday celebration in two weeks,

our ongoing collections for the Shepherd of the Streets, the Pregnancy Care Center, and many more.

(5)And we want to let others know about what Jesus does for us and with us.

We have The Way starting this fall again for conversation, information, and personal growth.

We pray for the present-day saints who witness and suffer for their faith in so many lands.

We encourage and support a missionary in Liberia.

And maybe we dare to have a conversation with a friend, neighbor, or relative.

And we approach it all with the attitude which Jesus commends: that all these things are not personal achievements, but gifts which are received and used and shared.

How different our relationships with each other would be if we would adopt Jesus' focus on the gifts of grace that are offered to us.

We know how painfully tragic it is when husband and/or wife lose sight of marriage as God's gift to be shared.

What good news it is that God does not cease to give good gifts, even when we blunder.

He reproves, straightens us out, and bids us turn again to him with the eagerness, and openness, and the understanding that we don't deserve or merit anything.

He takes us, and in word and sacrament lays his hands on us, and blesses us.

We come today like beggars, deserving nothing.

We come like small children, with their kind of openness to receive.

We come as self-centered individuals willing to be transformed into God's holy family, the community of the church.

We come to offer this prayer: [LBW#357.3]

O Holy Spirit bind our hearts in unity,

And teach us how to find the love from self set free. Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.