Homily for 09/27/26

The interesting proverb, which apparently was being repeated among the Israelites in his day, out of bitterness towards God.

And the Israelites would say this the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.

The meaning of this proverb being, the fathers have sinned, and the children have received the punishment.

Their teeth are set on edge because of the sour grapes eaten by their parents.

And the question that's implied in this proverb is where is the justice in this?

If the fathers have sinned and the children reap the reward of that sin, how is God just?

And so what the prophet Ezekiel is dealing with in this passage are those who are speaking out against the justice of God and saying that he is not just.

This, I believe, is pertinent to us in this day and age, because there are probably many of us who have been tempted to ask the same question.

Or perhaps we know others who have said the same thing.

I am a product of my circumstance.

How can a just God hold me accountable?

This happened to me at this age.

My father or my mother did this or that.

I inherited this set of beliefs, or I received this certain habit.

Where is God's justice in holding me accountable for actions that I'm not even sure are my own?

But the response of the prophet Ezekiel is this: the soul that sinned shall die.

The prophet Ezekiel cuts through the excuses and brings it to the individual.

The individual will be judged as an individual.

Do not say that God is not just.

It is you, O house of Israel, who is not just.

Leave your excuses, leave your explanations, and instead turn from your sin.

This is what God desires of you.

The prophet tells us that God does not delight in the death of anyone.

Elsewhere, the scripture says God does not rejoice in the destruction of the wicked.

God does not desire death for the sake of death, instead, he is longing for the sinner to repent and live.

So do not bring an excuse for your actions, instead, forsake your actions.

Return to the Lord, and with him, the scriptures say, there is plenteous redemption.

Think for a moment on the justice of God.

These passages that we have heard this morning.

Not only is it that God is willing to forgive the sinner, the erring one who returns to the Lord, not only is he willing to receive the prodigal back to himself.

The scriptures that we have read this morning tell us that God is actively working for their repentance.

The epistle we read, St.

Paul, the conclusion of it, he tells us that it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

This repenting act has begun with God in us and for us.

So then how can we speak out against this judgment?

It's almost as if God has put his finger on the scale.

He's doing all in his power to remove the obstacles from our own salvation.

We are the ones who put the obstacles in the way.

We are the ones who are constantly fleeing from redemption.

I think this is highlighted for us in the parable that we read from St.

Matthew's gospel about the two sons.

There are two sons.

The father comes to him and says, Go out into the field.

And he says, I will not go.

But he goes eventually.

He goes to the other son and says, Go out into the field.

He says, Sir, I will go.

But he doesn't go.

Which one is the true son?

The one who goes, even begrudgingly.

I think this teaches us something interesting.

From the perspective of the father, he's not really that interested in sentiment.

He's not that interested in if you go rejoicing or happily.

He's willing to accept the begrudging sacrifice.

He's willing to accept the offering which is given, perhaps even with a spirit of anger or hard-heartedness.

That son who really doesn't want to do the will of his father, but does it anyways, having perhaps publicly declared that he will not do it still, the father is willing to look at him and say, This is my son.

I think this cuts against the grain of much of the narrative of scripture that we have received, depending on the tradition that you grew up in, which has such a fixation on sentiment, such a fixation on emotion.

Where it seems like in this passage, Jesus is saying, God is willing to accept what you'll give him.

As long as you give him something.

Again and again and again, it seems like the Lord is making the road back to sanctity, to salvation evil.

We are the ones who make it difficult.

The psalm we read this morning was not the psalm we were supposed to read this morning.

It was printed wrong by someone.

It was me.

That was the psalm that we read last week.

The psalm we were supposed to read this morning is Psalm 25, verses 1 through 14.

Psalms 25:1–14

Verse 7 of Psalm 25 is this: Gracious and righteous is the Lord.

Therefore will he teach sinners in the way.

The goodness of God, the righteousness of God according to the psalmist, is that God does not leave the sinner in his sin.

Instead, it seems like God is the one who has gone off the beaten path, God is the one who has condescended to the sinner, and God is the one who is willing to teach the sinner the right thing to do.

So instead of having a judge who is simply saying, Well, do what's right with a happy heart, or I'll destroy you.

Instead, we have a father who is pleading with us, who is teaching us all the ways of righteousness, all those, that knowledge of holiness that we had lacking in ourselves, God is ample and ready and happy to deliver to us, often despite ourselves.

A story I've probably shared before is St.

Augustine asks this wonderful question about the Psalms.

He says, How is God a good God in giving us the book of Psalms?

And what he means is this if I wrote a book of 150 songs about how great I am, and I gave it to you to sing, you'd be like, Well, Father, that's kind of arrogant.

So then how is God not arrogant in giving us a book that just tells us how cool God is?

Right?

St.

Augustine says, God does not need the psalms, but we do.

That which is lacking in our worship, God has supplied to us.

That which is lacking in our knowledge, God has supplied to us.

The righteousness and the graciousness of God is that he has come to us, and he has delivered to us the knowledge, the enlightening character of his Holy Spirit, which by nature we could not have.

So then, how dare we speak against the justice of God?

If anything, it seems like he is unjust, erring on the side of mercy, delivering to us again and again and again the precious gifts necessary for our soul's life that we are so ready to dispose of, that we are so ready to cast aside, that we are so ready to throw away and turn our backs to.

Any other judge would have written us off.

Any other judge would have said, I'm tired of pleading.

Any other judge would have said, You've known the rules, you've seen the bar, how many prophets have I delivered to you?

How many scriptures have I given you?

How many tablets do you need?

And been done.

But not our God.

The goodness of God is this.

He has come to us, even in our sin.

I think that's what's so lovely about the collect that we read this morning.

I'll remind you like this.

O merciful Lord, grant to your faithful people pardon and peace.

Pardon and peace.

The wonderful thing about pardon is you first have to have something to be pardoned of.

This is not a collect for the sinless.

This is not a collect for the righteous.

This is not for those who have walked perfectly or blamelessly in the law of God.

This is for those who need pardon.

And thereby comes peace.

Grant to your faithful people pardon and thereby peace.

The Lord has a peace for us, but it is by returning to him.

And in returning to him there is life and life abundantly.

There is a greater grace, not just that first grace which enlightens us that we may return to the Lord, but then that absolution which comes to us, having returned to him.

So much so that he's willing to overlook the begrudging spirit in our return.

This reminds me, I've probably shared this with a lot of you, but it's just such a helpful insight from St.

Bernard that I returned to it again and again and again and again.

St.

Bernard of Clairvaux has a tiny little treatise on the degrees of love, these steps of love, that love grows.

And so love can begin small.

And St.

Bernard of Clairvaux says that when we begin to love somebody, it starts with our benefit.

So the analogy I use a lot, and if you've heard this before, tough.

An analogy I use a lot is that if your grandchildren come to you and say, Grandma, grandpa, how'd you meet grandma or grandpa?

You say, Well, I saw her across from the bar or the coffee shop.

And she was the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.

Your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren would not say, Grandpa, that's kind of shallow.

Just beauty?

Sucks, dude.

They'd say, that's really sweet.

That's endearing.

Because we know love can begin there.

It cannot terminate there.

Now, if your grandchildren came to you and said, Why are you still with grandma?

And you said, Well, it's because she's hot.

And if she ever stopped at lever, they'd say, Wow, grandpa, that's kind of gross.

Because love can't terminate then.

We begin with loving for our benefit.

You see that person, they're beautiful, they're funny, they're witty, they're intelligent.

Whatever makes them attractive to you, it is because there is something desirable to you.

But that will fade.

That is the first degree of love.

But having learned that person, met that person, you now find that beneath that there is someone who is lovable in and of themselves.

And so in the beauty phase, when they're not as witty, and they've had a hard day and the jokes are no longer there, perhaps they're not seem as intelligent as they once did.

You realize they're a one-trick pony.

My wife can speak to that one.

You realize there's something lovable there.

St.

Bernard said, this is true of our love of God as well.

We first often come to him because of how he benefits us.

And then, through those benefits, as our Lord said, because he caused the rain and the sun to shine on both the righteous and the unrighteous, through his goodness towards us, you find he is good.

And you learn to love him because he is good.

And even apart from those benefits, you now love him not for your sake, but for his sake.

So then, comes back to this parable.

That son, perhaps he obeyed his father because he feared retribution.

Perhaps he obeyed his father because the law says if you disobey your father, you can be killed for it.

Perhaps there was some benefit he received from obeying his father.

It does not mean that it is not love.

It is just the beginning of love.

And God can use this and it will grow.

This is why I do not feel threatened or self-conscious when somebody comes to church because they don't want to go to hell.

This is the beginning of love.

But I would love for you to come to know the God who has more than not hell for you.

He has God for you.

This is the beginning of love.

It is okay when people start coming to church because they see something in the lives of Christians that they see as beneficial.

Perhaps their family seems stronger or happier.

Perhaps it makes a better civil society.

Whatever vision you have of the Christian life, this is only a benefit of God.

But it's okay to seek him for this.

But in finding his goodness in this, you will find that God Himself is good.

And St.

Bernard says, if you are consistent in this, one degree of love naturally produces the next degree of love.

And you will learn to love him for his sake.

And then he says, this, this is the culmination of the Christian life.

Not loving God for his sake, but in turn loving all things for God's sake.

All those first benefits which led me to God.

Perhaps we contemplated nature and saw the beauty of creation and said, ah, there is a good God who has given me beauty in creation.

Now I go back to creation and I realize what I loved in creation was really just God to begin with.

The mountain is beautiful because God is in it.

The tree is beautiful because God is in it.

I learned to love all things for God's sake.

That's the termination.

That's the culmination of Christian love that we are after.

So then, it is okay to begin on a small step of love.

St.

Bernard is very clear that because it is a prior degree, it does not mean that it is not love.

It just means that we are still growing.

So many of us may be that son who goes out into the field begrudgingly.

It's okay.

Our father has still called you a son or a daughter, and he has still accepted this sacrifice.

And he will use all that he can to bring our souls to salvation.

Bishop Mortimer says that God will use, no, Bishop Klein says, God will use even the feeblest apprehension of truth.

Okay, the smallest assertion of truth.

God, who is the way, the truth, and the life, can bring souls to salvation through this.

Thanks be to God.

Now, God is working for us.

The scriptures are clear here.

His grace is not mine.

It is a gift which he has given me.

God is laboring on my behalf for the sake of my salvation.

But it does not mean that I get to be inattentive.

Scriptures are clear here.

St.

Paul, in his epistle to the Philippians, we read this morning, he begins with everything that God has done for me.

Right?

Listen to it again.

So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy, living of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord of one mind, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, let each of you look not to his own interests, but also to the interests of other.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.

Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Because everything that Jesus has done for you, that you and all might confess him as Lord.

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, you may have obeyed as that first son, but you're obeying.

So now, not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

It's interesting.

St.

Paul seems to be saying, because it is God working in you, that should fill you with confidence.

But because it is God working in you, that should also fill you with fear and trepidation.

If it is God in you, how careful should you be to offend that God?

If there is an imminence or a nearness of God, where it seems like he is the very architect of your soul, there is a renovative work taking place inside of you, where Jesus Christ, that great carpenter of our souls, is refashioning this home which is your soul.

His very hands have been placed on the scaffolding of your heart, and he is building.

It is God within you building.

How careful should you be not to offend?

How precious should that building be to you?

Should you not worry about your actions?

Should you not be discerning about what you bring into that house?

Because it is God.

Therefore, fear and trembling.

I think that's what I'd like to leave us with this morning.

God desires actions.

It is okay if these actions are difficult.

It is okay if it is done begrudgingly.

But we must do something.

Why will you die, O house of Israel?

Turn to me and live.

Turning is an action.

Return to the Lord, and there is plenteous redemption.

Do not be near to him with your lips, but far from him with your heart.

The scriptures warn again and again and again against this.

God has begun a good work in you, but it is God's work.

So treat it as precious, as holy.

Do not take it for granted.

Do not act as if it was yours to begin with.

It's not.

You are stewarding something from Almighty God, and He will hold us accountable.

So instead, go out into the field.

Do what your Father has asked you to do.

Even if it's a feeble first step, he will accept it.

And he will bring you forward.

He who has begun that good work in you will see it through to completion.

But do so in fear and trembling, with attention, with reverence, recognizing that you are not walking this Christian life alone, but the one who walks with you is holy.

And that places a certain onus and responsibility on us.

In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.