Where it all starts: Passing it on - Sermon for Pentecost 7 2016

Sermon:

Text:Galatians 6

Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ who asks us to pass it on.

We’ve reached the last chapter in Galatians, a letter to a people who are still figuring out what it means to be Christian. They find themselves surrounded by people arguing many different things. You have to do that first to become Christian, you have to be Jewish first, you have to be circumcised, you have to follow all the laws first. And Paul has come in and pretty much shouted at them, no!  all that matters is Christ crucified on the cross, all starts there. Our salvation, our freedom, our faith, all starts there. Luther loved this letter, it’s what freed him from his constant fear over his sins. When he was a regular monk, before heading to University to become a professor, he would come to the confessor of his monastery, Johann von Staupitz, at all hours of the day and night fearful about whether he had confessed all his sins, whether he had done everything he needed to do to earn salvation. And when he read this letter fully he was transformed, he doesn’t need to earn salvation, Christ who loves him, gives it to him.

That’s the grace of God, that in our brokenness we have been freed and saved.

And yet, we always ask, what’s our part. I saw this joke comic on Facebook this week. Not an actual occurrence but illuminates the point. Martin says. We are saved by Grace through faith, it’s so easy a 5 year old can understand it. Yes, but what must we do? Quickly, someone fetch me a 5 year old.

What Paul writes of here is something entirely new, completely different than anything else. What Christ did, does, for us is the new creation, the new thing. In all other religions it’s all about what you have to do for God, what things you have to accomplish and sacrifice for God. Here Paul says, it’s what God has already done for us in Christ. Christianity is entirely different because instead of ourselves being asked to sacrifice, God the Son, Christ Jesus our Lord, is the sacrifice. As Paul writes, For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything!

And yet again, we always ask, what’s our part?

There is a concept that pops up in the news every once in a while. The idea of passing it on. Often seen through paying for the person behind you in line at a coffee shop or fast food drive-thru. It’s also seen in doing a good thing for someone else because someone did something good for you. 

I read the Christ in our Home devotional, and the first two weeks of July are written by Pastor Dan Ofstehage from Mobridge, but who grew up at St. Paul. He writes in yesterday’s devotional about caring for his daughters when they have a cut or bruise. When a child comes to you crying with a scrape or bruise, you help them, you reach out to them. You wish you could take the hurt on yourself instead. Remove it from them. Pastor Dan then connects our caring for children to Christ taking on our sins through the cross. That he indeed did take upon himself our hurts, our bruises, our sins. He came saw that we were hurting and broken, and gave us himself.

Is there anything greater than that? Again that’s where it starts. When we ask the question, what’s our part, it’s all in response to that. Christ’s sacrifice for us, his love shown for us through his death, his entering into our lives, is the ultimate example of passing it on.

When we go out to bear one another’s burdens we are passing on the love of Christ to our neighbor. 

We pass on the love of Christ when we care for our Children. When we tell them of the love Christ has for them, when we tell them to love their neighbors, to go out and pass it on as well.

We pass on the love of Christ when we visit those who are sick, when we send them cards, when we give them a call of encouragement, when we let them know they are in our prayers, when we ask if there’s anything we can do for them.

We pass on the love of Christ when we care for our community and country. When we seek to make it so that all citizens have the freedom our great country offers. When we take an extra step to make our town a cleaner and better place. 

In the letter to the Galatians what Paul has done is shown how Christ has changed everything. Something that he is so excited about that he has to physically finish his whole letter. While he had the majority transcribed, telling someone else to write it down for him, at the very end, he writes, “See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand!” In his own handwriting he puts down the final greeting of the letter and reestablishes his most important points. “May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything!”

A new creation is everything. We belong to Christ. Christ is in us. Through Christ we have been transformed. We have been freed. We have been saved. It all starts there.

And our call from this is to pass it on. To pass it on by telling the story of Christ’s presence in our lives through our words, and to respond to what Christ has done for us in our actions.

We are Christ’s new creation, we have been transformed by Christ, and we go out to work to transform the world that God loved so much, that Christ, the Son of God, loved enough to go to the cross to save.

Let us pray,

God of freedom, grace, and faith. Everything we are in found in you. We are your new creation, the world is your new creation. Help us to be Christ’s hands and feet in the world, passing on the love shown to us in his death upon the cross. Amen.