Sermon for March 30, 2008: Sharing Our InheritanceSHARING OUR INHERITANCE Sometimes you can’t help but rejoice. Sometimes there’s just such good news that you want to shout it from the housetops. So it is with our psalmist for today. He’s been blessed by God—and he knows it. He looks around and he sees that the land on which he stands, this precious, precious land, is a gift from God.
We recently received an inheritance here at church. Hallie Jefferson wanted to be a faithful steward of her resources. So, when she planned her estate, she planned well. And, as a part of her planning, she was generous enough, faithful enough, to include her church. It was her promise to us. A promise unknown to us until she died last fall. But now her promise has been fulfilled. And we’ve been blessed with a gift of over $27,000. Our inheritance. Many of us have received an inheritance from our parents or grandparents. Many of us will leave an inheritance to our children and grandchildren. Some of us will include our church. And, as we bless God today for Hallie’s, generosity, we will bless God because of you and your generosity. But, of course, there are different kinds in inheritances. There’s land—the Promised Land—given to ancient Israel. There’s the obvious inheritance of money. But then there are also the genetics we’ve inherited—the color of our eyes, our height, the build of our bodies, the propensity for certain diseases. There are the talents and abilities we’ve inherited too. Chuck Blanchard, our music director, tells me that Lydia Nitz, Richard and Mary Beth’s three-year old daughter, has a passion for climbing up on the organ seat next to Chuck and playing the keys. I happen to know that Lydia’s grandmother was a church organist. Who knows where this will lead? But there’s also another kind of inheritance too, a spiritual one. And it’s one that the writer of I Peter, our readings for today, is excited about. Very excited. In fact, like the psalmist, he’s so excited, he’s almost delirious:
An imperishable, undefiled, unfading inheritance. An inheritance that we don’t receive now, but, like any inheritance, we’ll receive it some day. And until then? Until then it’s being kept in heaven, safe with God. An inheritance. What kind of inheritance? Land? Gold? Better genes when we receive our resurrection body? No, of course not. This spiritual inheritance is something far more precious, far more lasting, far better that anything we could either create or imagine. Peter calls it salvation, our “salvation ready to be revealed in the last time,” our salvation—the outcome of our faith. Other words and phrases work just as well: our righteousness, our justification, eternal life, our life with God. This is our spiritual inheritance promised in Holy Baptism. Why, Peter even uses baptismal imagery in today’s text:
A “new birth.” It’s one of the strongest baptismal imageries in the New Testament. “You must be born again,” or “be born from above,” Jesus tells Nicodemus. In fact,
I mentioned Lydia Nitz a moment ago. Later on today, during the 11:00 service, we’re going to baptize her twin brothers, Lukas and Liam. That’s going to be their re-birth. It’s also the most important event in their lives as God pours out his multitude of promises upon them. Included in these promises is the promise of their inheritance, their inheritance of their salvation, their everlasting life with God, an inheritance that is “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.” An inheritance kept in heaven for them until God is ready to fulfill his promise in God’s own good time. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” indeed! But what prompts the writing of such good news? What was going on in the lives of those who first heard this letter? When this letter we call “First Peter” was written, it was addressed to Christians living in five Roman provinces, all of whom were under some kind of persecution for their faith. The author of this letter alludes to their sufferings in that portion of his letter we read today:
Later on, he’ll expand on these “various trials” so that it becomes clear that those who are hearing his letter read are suffering because they’ve become disciples of Jesus. Many, if not most, of the folks who lived around these early Christians, adhered to Roman religion. The Christian faith was new, and, by comparison, radical. For when people began to confess Jesus, and not Caesar, as Lord, that in itself was threatening to the power of the Empire. But in addition, Christians had a radical view of a new social order in a heavily patriarchal culture, as the Christian faith elevated the position of women, gave honor to children, and called for a breaking down of the many barriers that separated people from one another: men and women, slave and free, Jew and Gentile. The Roman powers—as well as the Roman people—felt threatened. So persecutions of the early Christians began on a local level. Eventually they spread throughout the Empire. So that when Nero, the mentally deranged emperor, burned Rome in 64 AD, he blamed the Christians. And that was just the beginning. We’ve all heard those stories of Christians being thrown to the lions, and many of those stories are literally true. But it’s hard, so very hard, for us to imagine being persecuted for the faith at all. We live in a land of religious tolerance. We’re free to worship when and where we will without fear of recrimination or reprisal. We can build our churches, put crosses out front, and gather together week after week to sing our beloved hymns and break bread together. And no one bothers us. Not so in other parts of the world. Even today, in over 30 nations, Christians—our brothers and sisters in Christ—are being persecuted in some degree for no other reason than they name the name of Jesus. From fines to discrimination in education and employment, from lengthy detentions to confiscation of property, from starvation to torture and slavery, Christians experience some form of persecution in far off places like Ethiopia and Nigeria, China and North Korea, Syria and Saudi Arabia. And the words of our text for today from I Peter, speak to them. They need to know and remember that by God’s great mercy, they have been And, in the meantime? In the meantime you and I have much work to do on their behalf. Obviously we can’t hop on an airplane and go to these far off places. And, even if we could, we’d probably be more of a hindrance than a help. But we can learn about their suffering, and we can remember our persecuted sisters and brothers in prayer. We can offer them up before the throne of God. The early apostles did just that. They remembered those who were suffering for the faith. They thought about them; they prayed for them. It was their way of standing in solidarity with their sisters and brothers in Christ. We can do no less. For some day we’ll meet those who suffer because they followed Jesus. After all, we share with them a common inheritance. Which means that some day we’ll all gather around the table at the Lamb’s High Feast, and we’ll break the bread of his body and drink the wine of salvation with all those who, down through history—from the first century to today and beyond—who have named the name of Jesus and suffered for it. And, when we gather around that table, what are we going to tell them that we did while they were being persecuted? Let us tell them that we sought to find ways to share in their sufferings, to bear their burdens, which, as Paul writes, is the law of Christ, the law of love (Galatians 6:2). And then, with integrity, we can all sing together Peter’s doxology, his song of praise:
Amen. |
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