"Nothing Is Deserved" October 28, 2007 Reformation Sunday

(First read the text for ths sermon: Romans 3:19-28)

Many of you know I was very sick last fall and winter. Indeed, it was exactly a year ago Friday that I was taken by ambulance from my pulmonologist’s office to the Williamsburg hospital. I remember only about five hours of that hospitalization, before I was given heavy sedation and put on a ventilator. (I learned later that Pastors Behlendorf and Shoberg visited me. At the time I had no idea!) A year ago yesterday I was transferred from Williamsburg to the Intensive Care Unit at Norfolk General Hospital. It is an emotional thing for me to think that one year ago right now I was unaware of anything and anyone, breathing only because I was aided by a machine, attended by a team of very smart doctors at the Eastern Virginia Medical School who were mystified, treating me for five different possible maladies, trying to figure out what was the matter with me!

The day I will really celebrate will be this Saturday, November 3. On November 3 of last year the doctors arrived at a correct diagnosis, and began the treatment that was so effective! A week after that I was alert enough to be told by my mom that my father had died. Two weeks after that Patty finally told me what I had been through. (That’s when it began to dawn on me what she had been through).

A month after I was released from the hospital, Patty was going to drive me to Norfolk for a follow-up appointment with my infectious disease specialist, and she said, “Let’s leave an hour early and visit the nurses and therapists who took care of you in the hospital.” I agreed – although, I have to tell you, it was with fear and trepidation that I said “yes.” I wondered how I would react to being back in those Intensive Care and the Progressive Ventilator Care Units, where I had been so sick?

The visit resulted in a surrealistic experience. Patty led me to the ICU (which I wouldn’t have been able to find on my own) – and she introduced me to the veteran ICU nurse who had taken care of me that first week, and who was thrilled to see me – but of whose care I had no remembrance!

What a profoundly humbling experience – of being entirely out of control, entirely dependent upon others, literally, for my next breath.

Here’s why I’m telling you all of this: I hadn’t deserved to be sick! Was there anyone with healthier daily habits? In each of the previous three years I had averaged over 2,000 miles on my bicycle. For years I had paid close attention to my nutrition and my weight, and (for the most part) I had practiced what I preach to you about taking care of yourself: about being sure to build in times of rest and play into your daily and weekly rhythms. Didn’t I deserve good health?

I’ve never begun a Reformation Sunday sermon in this way, and forgive me if I’m being too personal. (I certainly don’t want my story to distract you from God’s Story!) But this is how I’m able to enter into the familiar verses from Romans this year, the verses that we read each year on this Lutheran festival.

You see, Paul is making the point that nothing is deserved! Our justification, our salvation, the forgiveness of our sins – none of that is deserved.

Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. According to Paul, God’s law sets the standard of behavior that is pleasing to God, and we are indeed held accountable to God for what we do, for how we act towards God and how we treat other people. But not one of us can measure up to that standard, and so, not one of us deserves a reward from God for good behavior. Instead, the purpose of God’s law is to hold us to such a high, unattainable standard that here is the result: every mouth that would speak in self-righteous boasting is silenced!

For "no human being will be justified in [God’s] sight" by deeds prescribed by the law, Paul writes, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin. “The knowledge of sin” is the knowledge that you and I cannot please God – and the harder we try, the worse we feel about our sin. What bad news!

But listen to this good news! Paul writes: But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. And listen to what Paul writes next: For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

It is not deserved! It is gift!

How do we receive the grace of this redemption? To use Paul’s words, it is grace effective through faith. We cannot be self-righteous, because it is God who makes us righteous!

Not one of us deserves this. There is no distinction among us. Our salvation, our justification, our forgiveness; for each one of us, it is all gift.

This theological point is the reason why there is a Lutheran church. Luther latched onto this as the core of the gospel of Jesus the Christ, and he would not let go. From this core of the gospel, Luther tried his best to reform the church of his day, so that the life of the church would reflect such grace. But the political environment was too narrow (much as it is today in the Roman Catholic Church) to allow Luther’s reforming dissent.

But consider: What grace and freedom there is when we live in the full knowledge that nothing is deserved, that our salvation, our justification, our forgiveness is all gift! We are not motivated by fear of a God who would fry us. The life of faith is not cursed by a grim religious determination to “be good” in the life-long fearful hope that God might reward us with heaven.

Instead, knowing that we are accountable, there is the return to the waters of baptism each week, speaking words of confession and hearing words of God’s forgiveness. There is the return to the holy table each week, eating and drinking God’s forgiveness of our sins, eating and drinking God’s gifts of salvation and eternal life. What a joyful climax to our weekly liturgy!

Then there is that eternal life lived out, in our daily lives! In response to receiving the undeserved gift of salvation and justification and forgiveness, we are filled with joy. We are moved to spend our days joyously doing good works for those in need!

Our salvation, our justification, our forgiveness, this day of life, our next breath – you and I deserve none of that! All of it is gift from God.
Our lives of servanthood are lived in response.

What joy!

In the name of God, who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia