There are two ways of living:

judgment, or

promise

or we may say, we live either by:

rule, law, penalty, regulation, punishment, retribution, and fear …

or we live by

hope, freedom, trust, liberty, expectation, faith …

We often live by sentences that sound like this:

“If you touch that, then I will have to punish  you.”

“If you do not take out the garbage, then I will have to ground you.”

And worse … How about this?

“If you threaten me, I will attack you.”

“If you make me upset, you’ll be sorry.”

And sometimes even worse than that, as in:

“Because you are (a child, an old person, someone who looks different, someone whose speaks a different language, someone who wears a different colour on his or her skin, someone whose orientation is different than mine … and on and on) … because you are this and not that, then you have no place, no welcome, no part, and you will be seen always as the other, and not as the brother, or the sister, or the neighbor, or the friend.”

In other words, we can live by sentences that have as their conclusion: judgment, law, rule, penalty, maybe even worse … violence, war, death.

They are the sentences of the harsh and angry parent who, larger than life, brings down pronouncements upon small children and expects obedience without question.

They are the sentences of the abuser, the neglecter, the bully.

They produce anxiety, despair, desolation, hopelessness, a sense of unworthiness and shame.

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The other sentences sound like this:

“Because you are who you are, I love you.”

“No matter what happens, you are still in my heart.”

“When you make a mistake, I will hold you in understanding.”

“When you act contrary or strangely or fearfully, I will stand in firmness so you can have hope.”

“Because you are (a child, an old person, someone who looks different, someone whose speaks a different language, someone who wears a different colour on his or her skin, someone whose orientation is different than mine … and on and on) … because you are this and not that … I will honour you, respect you, welcome you, uplift you, and consider you brother or sister or neighbor or friend.”

In other words, we can live by sentences that have as their conclusion: grace, compassion, hope, inclusion, tolerance, understanding, and love.

They are the sentences of a loving parent, who seeks to honour and respect and cherish the child she is raising.

They are the sentences of the lover, the companion, the stalwart defender of dignity.

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The church language for all this is law and gospel.  It’s our shorthand way of explaining what I’ve just said. 

It is, in fact, how we read and tell the story of God and Us, the relationship of Creator and Creature.

It is for followers of Jesus, the implicit understanding we have of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, a community that sees in Jesus from Nazareth the closest touch we have with the Eternal One, and seeks, as a community, to be like the one we have touched and who touches us.

We can, and many religious people do, see within the pages of Holy Scripture a God who is quite full of punishment and un-love, who demands obedience without question, who will not tolerate discussion or inquiry, and who pledges only death.

It is not the God that I meet within the pages of Scripture, but I hear that God being talked about a lot … often in the media, frequently in large gatherings of church assemblies who are afraid of creation and what creation looks like. 

It’s who Martin Luther called the Deus Nudus …the “Naked God” … God in all of God-ness before whom mere humanity could only be vaporized.

It’s the God who appeared one Sunday morning in my Sunday School class when I asked about why a friend of mine went to another church (it happened to be a Roman Catholic Church … but in my young mind I was not really aware that there were different branches on the tree of faith, I assumed everyone did what we did and looked like we looked) …and so I asked about her and her church.

The answer came thundering down from the loftiness of my Teacher,

“You wouldn’t want to go there.  And be sure you never marry anyone from that Church!”

I was only 7 years old … what did I know about marriage?!

I had met the Deus Nudus or at least my Teacher’s version … perhaps the Deus Ridiculousness …

Martin Luther said, however, there are actually two Gods … the other God is the Deus Absconditus … the “Hidden God” or the God who is Clothed and not Naked before Humanity.  This God is the God who hides or masks himself/herself/Godself in Grace and Compassion and Love and (for Luther) Jesus and the Story and Baptism and the Eucharist and (since it is appropriate today … Confirmation).

It is to this God that Luther ran in his search for forgiveness, understanding, faith, and hope.

Not the Angry Deity who Kills, but the Loving Creator who Saves.

[Owen, I assure you, it is the Deus Absconditus that is present this morning as you make your Confirmation Promises.  It is the Loving Creator who has been with you as with all of us from our moment of birth, who has been present in the community in which you have grown up, and who will be with you, as with us, through your whole, entire life … and who promises even beyond.]

We live either by Law or Gospel, by Dread or Hope, by Fear or Trust, by Nightmare or Vision.

About a half-century before Jesus was born, someone (the tradition says it was King Solomon, but we know that is not true … it was probably someone who admired the story of King Solomon) … someone wrote down some words about God, his or her vision of God, who God is, what God is like, and most of all what God promises.

We heard the words this morning in the first Reading, some verses from a writing that is one of the seven wisdom books of what is called the Greek Old Testament (or the Septuagint) the other books being: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, and Sirach.

With Sirach, the Wisdom of Solomon is found in Bibles that include between the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament) and the Greek Scriptures (the New Testament) a collection we call the Apocrypha … or sometimes you will hear deuterocanonical (the second canon of Scripture).

Wisdom personified is speaking in this writing and tells us that being made in the image of God includes sharing with God, and that means the hope that death is not the conclusion of the human story.

But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them.  In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace.

Yes, Wisdom speaks, this life is for the righteous and the un-godly can expect to be excluded … but the hope is, the promise is life with God is available for everyone.

Not the sentence of an angry parent-God who wishes only to punish and kill; but the vision of a loving, gentle, expectant God who wishes only that all creation will come and be part of who God is.

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 This is All Saints Day, the day when we remember those who have died, our loved ones who have gone before us (we believe) to be in the hand of God and live at peace.

When we sing our hymns For All the Saints, Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones, Who Are These Like Stars Appearing, Behold the Host Arrayed in White … when we speak our prayers, when we celebrate the Holy Meal, when we hear the promises of a young person in the midst of his congregation … we affirm that the future hope of life with God is not a distant thing … which will one day come to all of us … but something, let us say not just a promise, but a living promise, a life promise … that compels us to live here and now in the hope of that promise … so that everything we do, the words we say, the actions we take, the postures we present, the movements we perform … are each and every and all done in the light of that love, that grace, that compassion, that God who Promises Life.

And our lives, every day of them, every moment of them turn from Law to Gospel, so that we ourselves turn from Judgment to Promise, from Despair to Hope, from Sorrow to Joy, from Fear to Love … and in our living, reflect the God of Love in whose hand we are held and in whose peace we live.

+ Deo Gratia. Amen.
The Rev. Benjamin Larzelere III, Pastor

 

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