October 5, 2014

Everyone loves St. Paul. The Holy Spirit revealed to St. Paul the true meaning of the Gospel. And in his writings in the New Testament, the Holy Spirit through St. Paul reveals that Gospel to us. St. Paul writes with Gospel excitement, and that makes his epistle-letters come alive in our hearts and in our lives.

Paul was not always a Christian. In fact, he started his career by persecuting Christian believers and putting them in jail. Then Christ appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus in a blinding light. And that was his conversion experience. He changed from a person who refuted the Gospel to a person who proclaimed it as the truth of God. That is one reason why we love St. Paul. He had a complete, 180 degree turn-around conversion. That gives us hope that we can utterly change our lives too. In the church that is called conversion or repentance or belief or faith or sanctification or confirmation or dedication etc. Even for long time Christians, we love St. Paul because we know how we have sinned and we get frustrated in our Christians lives. And the trials and troubles and joy of St. Paul give us courage and hope for our own faith life.

Paul was not always a Christian. He was proud that he was an Israelite from birth and so had no doubt about his salvation. He had a great religious profile and was zealous for Judaism, even persecuting the church. But when he met Christ, he knew that all that was useless, it was garbage. It was rubbish because it was all about himself and not about God. It was who he was and what he did and where he had put his confidence on himself and why he thought God should smile at him and how he lived his life. He had a righteousness of his own that came from the Law. For such a righteousness, God is not really necessary.

We can get caught in the same sort of thinking. We can take pride in our roots. For example, a little different than St. Paul, but I was born in a Christian family and baptized when three weeks old and went to Sunday school and was confirmed in the Lutheran Church. I went to Seminary, and like St. Paul who was zealous for Judaism, I was zealous for Christianity, and especially the Lutheran understanding of Christianity. The danger we all have is that we can get a false confidence which is based on our selves. We go to the right church. We studied the Bible and Catechism. We do good work in God’s Vineyard. We are basically good people really. So shouldn’t God smile upon us? But this is a righteousness that comes from keeping the Law. For such a righteousness, Christ did not have to die on the cross. And that is why St. Paul says that such stuff is garbage.

In the Bible era, the valley outside Jerusalem where garbage was burned had the name “Gehenna.” This continuously smoldering, smelly place became a figure of hell. In the New Testament, Jesus used the word “Gehenna” to mean what in English we translate as “Hell.” (Cf. Matthew 10:28, Matthew 25:41, et.alia.) St. Paul considered his old way of thinking as rubbish, as useless. And that sort of self-righteousness must be discarded before it takes us with it to the garbage incinerator of Hell.

Rather than Hell and death, St. Paul came to know Christ and the power of his resurrection. He said it this way: “7 But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith” (Phil. 3:7-9). St. Paul knew Christ. He knew Christ’s suffering and death and resurrection. This was the work of Christ; it was not the work of St. Paul, and so the righteousness of Christ is perfect and has the power of salvation. The “righteousness” of Christ means that Christ did the “right thing” and this puts us in a good relationship with God that is “just right.”

October is Reformation Month. Every year, with Martin Luther, we rediscover the Gospel of Christ. It changed the lives of Paul and Luther, and it changes our lives, too. We collect a lot of trash in our lives: sin, regrets, fears, and worries. Christ is the “garbage collector” who takes our trash upon himself and he takes it to Gehenna and Hell and destroys it. This is forgiveness, this is resurrection, this is salvation.

Amen.

Michael Nearhood, Pastor
Okinawa Lutheran Church

Sermon Index