The sermon for July 23 was based on Matthew 5:20-26.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

It's a recurring scene in the movies. Some basically nice guy, trying to be as polite as possible, gets backed into a corner by some aggressive Cosmo gal and before he knows it she's trying to kiss him and at just the wrong moment our poor nebbish seems to be caught by his wife in the arms of another woman. The wife is naturally disgusted and in a way, so are we.

Among the many changing and conflicted circumstances of modern life is the weird fact that we live in an age of absolutely terrible manners while being almost completely obsessed with niceness. When gentle manners are accompanied by strength and integrity we think of superman. When they are a mask for weakness and poor character we think of the guy in the film. It is righteousness, Jesus says, that paves that the way to heaven, not niceness or politeness and certainly not the ridiculous political correctness of our times.

We come together in this place to be affirmed in our beliefs, to be encouraged while living in a world that thinks were both stupid and foolish. It's good to come together with other people who believe in Adam and Eve, Noah and the Ark and in Jesus' resurrection. But we also come here to be challenged to be told where we're wrong and were we need to change our thinking and our behavior. We come here, I hope, to be challenged and corrected. I want to challenge your ideas about what it means to be a Christian as well as to challenge your ideas about Jesus.

Jesus says that we must be righteous if we hope to enter heaven. More righteous, in fact, than the most upright and decent people we know. But what is righteousness? We often confuse righteousness with the goodness we see in mild mannered, generous people like Mother Teresa. We mistake righteousness for the even keeled dispositions of eastern mystics like the Dali Lama. Nothing seems more righteous to us than a quiet neighbor who pays his bills, sends his kids to college and remains faithful to his wife. But these are merely good manners, not righteousness. At the heart of righteousness is rightness. The primary component of being righteous is being right!

To be sweet and civil and soft and demure while being wrong about what your doing helps no one. What good does it do to nurse the sick while leading them away from the promise of heaven? What good does it do to tour the world promoting peace and quiet when you can offer no real hope for the world to come? Who wins in a life of following the rules when all the while you are chaffing in the chains of your chores instead of taking pride in your responsibilities? No One! It is the way of the devil himself to use sweetness and light to mask error and evil.

We have such a hard time with the Word of God and the life of the Church, to say nothing of the life of our fellow Christians in part because our expectations are so out of whack. We know that we should be righteous but we don't know what righteousness looks like. God, we know is righteous but we don't read the Bible or listen very closely to the sermons so we're left with only the pictures we see in the book shops and in our grandmother's houses to inform us. God is righteous and whenever I see him he's either smiling or holding little children or knocking on a quint little door. Reconcile that, if you can, with the fact, confessed by Jesus Himself, that He will send most of the people He creates to an eternity of torment in Hell. Whatever that is it isn't nice!

But God never claims to be nice or to be polite for that matter. In Isaiah He calls Himself, Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. To Moses He says that He is a Jealous God. St. John tells us that He is Love but nowhere in the Bible does God ever call Himself nice, neither incidentally does anyone else. The word doesn't even appear in Scripture. What's the point you ask, why belabor the point that God isn't nice and polite, that He wouldn't fit in at our backyard parties and family reunions? For this reason.

When there's trouble, real trouble and lives and livelihoods are on the line people to not seek the protection of nice men, they flock to men who are good and know what needs to be done. When it really matters, when the bullets are flying and the stakes are high we want men like the kind with which King David surround himself, men whom the Bible describes as having an understanding of the times and a knowledge of what the people should do. Like David himself they were as strong and righteous as mere mortals can be but there is nothing in the Bible that leads us to think that in casual conversation they would have any special care for your self-esteem.

Teddy Roosevelt whom most of you know I admire as much a Luther himself, is famous for having counseled to speak softly but to carry a big stick. For him that big stick was the United States Navy. For ordinary people like ourselves that big stick is being right, is knowing what we are to do and having the determination and conviction to do our various duties. As you assess your life and the lives of the people around you are you looking for these qualities or are you confusing them with niceness, politeness and political correctness? ... It makes a difference, doesn't it?

Which brings us back to Scripture. It is the calling of every Christian regardless of station or circumstance to live according the will and Word of God as revealing in the Holy Bible, no matter what anyone else says. If makes an enemy of your parents or siblings or children or spouse, so be it. If people are driven to crucify you for the choices you make, so be it. If you are condemned by the whole world as being intolerable, so be it. That is the life to which we are called. It is absolutely going to be a difficult and embattled life but that is what the cross means.

No life so lived will be very popular with the neighbors. But even if we lived that way to the very best of our abilities all the time, ignoring the cost to ourselves and to others, as did Jesus and the Apostles, it still wouldn't be enough to get into heaven. Even a life of that kind of outstanding devotion will not satisfy God because God is a perfectionist and nothing less that absolutely perfect, unblemished righteousness will do. We must be without sin of any kind, wholly Holy, absolutely and perfectly attuned to God's every thought and desire in order to satisfy Him.

We must be more than right in order to be righteous we must be right with God. And I mean RIGHT... WITH... GOD! We must be more than obedient to Him, we must be bound to Him in every possible and impossible way. And this brings us back to the Word of God and His Holy Sacraments. The Means of Grace unite us to God and they align our two very different wills. The Holy Ghost uses God's inspired and inerrant Word to reveal His will to us and illuminate our understanding of it. Baptism gives us the faith in God that makes us desire to please Him. The Lord's Supper forgives our sins and draws us to Him in both body and soul. Holy Absolution reminds us that although God is absolute and unapproachably holy, He also desires nothing in the world more than our company now and forever and has done everything necessary to save for Himself.

And now we come down to brass tacks. The Church is not some religious version of Oprah's show where we come together to share our feelings about being oppressed and wring our hands about how hard it is to get along in this man's world. It is, rather, the place where the tough go to deal with hard times by strengthening their connection to a God who is not only a God but also a man, a man that is good and righteous, the kind of man we need when there is work to be done.

This is what St. Paul is talking about in his letter to the Romans. When you looking the angel of death in the eyes, all you want to know is where Jesus is and to know that He has, indeed, conquered death and sanctified the grave. When the devil is circling you accusing of horrible things and you know that his accusations are right on the money, that you are literally guilty as sin, you will be glad that you Savior is the kind who could drive the money changers from His home with a whip because that is the only kind of savior who can be sufficiently insistent that you have been forgiven and that nothing is to be held against you in the eyes of God. When you are alone in the world, when you have sunk as low as you can get and no one who really knows you wants anything to do with you anymore only a person with the drive to do what is good and Godly will befriend you. The kind of love and devotion we see in Ruth is the fruit of a faith in a God that is good and righteous. God is no nebbish He is our Righteousness consequently we can be more than we are. Amen.

The peace of God, which passes . . .

Last Updated: 5/27/2009