“Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”[1]
Let us pray. “May the meditations of my heart and the words of my mouth be pleasing unto you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”[2] Amen.
To begin, I want to take you through a bit of this past week for me and the Backus’ family at May Road in Potsdam. As you all probably know I keep myself rather busy, perhaps industrious, at work. This week was one where balancing work and family and volunteering was very challenging. You see at work, in addition to regular duties as a faculty member doing research, class prep for next year, and managing the construction program at Clarkson (inclusive of the oversight of a number of interns), I have two “big projects” that made this an especially busy time: 1) helping with our program self-study for accreditation as well as, 2) helping the senior leadership determine the path forward for our capital project investments. It is a lot to be done, all before the start of the new fiscal year next Wednesday. But this was coupled with the fact that this was the last week of Kindergarten for Emily with a series of half days starting on Tuesdays, meaning Jackie and I had to figure out how to cover things in the afternoons Tuesday through Friday; I took the brunt on Thursday and Friday with Jackie taking earlier in the week. Emily, of course has swimming lessons at 4 pm that have to be factored into the plans. And then comes the volunteer/service part of the week. I was recently notified that I had come up for jury duty and had to report Tuesday afternoon for processing and possible selection; I was not selected so that made for a slightly easier Thursday. But then there was also two information sessions for the Rock Charitable Fund that happened on Wednesday and Thursday evening that took me across the county in an effort to help churches, cemeteries, historic places, and veterans groups with their needs. Yea, in a phrase, that is a whirlwind of activity for the week. One could say, and many often do tell me this, “you have earned your pay this week.” That is certainly a way to look at it, but in thinking about the lessons this week, I am rather reminded that there is a very different way to look at things.
One of the great challenges that those that regularly preach encounter is how to discern the message that is the right one for any given Sunday (for us Saturday) service. Thanks to the common lectionary, we are given three lessons and a psalm to reflect on and figure out where they are speaking to us: as a collection of texts having a theme or through line, as a voice from the past with something to tell our present, and as something that asks us to ask deeper questions as to what the scriptures mean, not just what they say, and what they mean to us and how we live our lives. In hearing about “wages” and “sin” and “obedience” and “welcome” and “slaves” and “grace”, I was drawn into thinking about Luther and his take on economics and how we ought to live our lives.
As most of us Lutherans know, Luther did not shy away from having an opinion. Whether we hear of these through his many table-talks, or from letters to his various correspondents, or from his formal writings and sermons, Luther was willing to more or less talk about anything. As offered in one paper, “Martin Luther has, in the modern economic as well as historian’s literature, often been portrayed as a mediaeval ignoramus helplessly shouting against the forces of modern capitalism, with little meaningful economic insight or contribution made to modern economic reasoning.”[3] But, as the same author notes, “… to fully understand Luther’s economics also means we have to engage with the origins of his theology, not only because his economics and theology were intrinsically related and built upon one another, but because in a historical context it makes little sense to analytically disentangle theology from economics.”[4] Thus, the lessons today might better be understood if we see them through the things that Luther had to say about God’s economy. As one author notes, “the principle of benevolence is at the root of Martin Luther’s thinking on society, the economy, and business ethics.”[5] As the same author indicates, “Luther had two different economic systems in his thinking: The temporal tamed market economy and the coming eschatological economic system of Christ.” Whether it is in works like the “Bondage of the Will” or the “Freedom of the Christian,” or in “On Trading and Usury”, Luther comes again and again to the spiritual reality that God had, from our origins in creation, a very different economy in mind. And where I might differ with the second author is in the fact that not only is that economy a “coming eschatological economic system of Christ” it is a present economic system that is essential to understanding the Kingdom of God that has come near to us.
Today’s lessons point to this in the way that God illustrates how we ought to live out our calling in this world. In the gospel lesson today it is “[w]hoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”[6] God is calling us to a welcome that: a) is without reservation, b) is an explicit invitation to be in relationship with God himself, and c) is accomplished in the welcoming of each and every one of us in our daily lives. In Paul’s letter to the Romans, it is “[d]o you not know that, if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that you who were slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted and that you, having been set free from sin, have become enslaved to righteousness.”[7] Here God is inviting us fully into the paradox that it is in becoming slaves to, or being fully obedient to, God’s grace, or by giving up trying to be in charge, giving up trying to possess everything, we become fully free and enriched. Paul reminds us of this explicitly by stating clearly that “… the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[8] This is true now and forever more because of what God first did for us. Jeremiah points us to the way we know this in the first lesson when he says that “[a]s for the prophet who prophesies peace, when the word of that prophet comes true, then it will be known that the Lord has truly sent the prophet.”[9] Jesus, in his resurrection, proved that he was indeed the Word, the Word that came true and has established God’s kingdome on earth now and always. And because of that, as Paul offers, sin will have not have dominion over us, since we are not under the law but under grace.”[10]
Part of why this has come to me as a bit of a revelation is from my listening to the Bible Project podcast over the last several weeks. Starting in late March, Tim Mackie and Jon Collins, have been doing a week by week look at the 10 commandments, or as they have articulated them “the 10 words”. For me this has been like a deep dive into the small catechism, returning to not just reading the commands but understanding “what does this mean” as Luther repeatedly calls us to know. There is a lot I can share about the 10 commandments, and there are volumes of texts that can be read. But related to todays lessons was the most recent episode where Tim and Jon explored the final commandments around “coveting”. For those needing a reminder:
“Neither shall you covet your neighbor’s wife.” “Neither shall you desire your neighbor’s house, or field, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”[11]
In contemplating these commands, what I appreciated most was how they looked at it. Tim being a Hebrew scholar, went back to the actual words in Hebrew, as is his habit, and drew out how “coveting” was nothing more than “desiring”. And what they drew out from their conversation is how what God is constantly revealing to us is that our who desire ought to be on Him and our relationship with him. To desire other things, to place other things above God, really is at the heart of what sin is about. Our fall in the Garden, the Genesis 3 moment, was, at its core, about desiring something other than God. To use a phrase, we chose “not-God” over God. As written, when our first parents “… saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise …”[12] we chose to imbibe in the fruit of that tree instead of remaining in the fullness of grace that was how the world was supposed to work. Tim and Jon highlight that repeatedly, here in the decalogue and throughout all of scripture, God over and over seeks for us to return again to centering our desires on him and his grace.
For me then, that is what I am gleaning from these lessons. They are a call, especially in the light of Jesus as our savior Lord, to give in and let go to the things in this world that are hindering our relationship with Him. And this should be a joy not a chore. As Martin Marty says, living into God’s grace allows us to do the things we need to do, not because we have to, but because we get to. The economics of God’s Kingdom are such that we recognize and become dumbfounded by the fact that everything we are and everything we have is first and always from God the Creator. We are mere stewards, we really own nothing. And with that we should and deserve no wages. No we are merely doing what is the right response, if we are being righteous, for what we have already received. Regardless, however, God, in his mercy and unjust justice, heaps on us His grace, His blessings and His love, without reservation and with the fullest welcoming embrace. May we learn to do likewise, out in His world.
“Now may the piece of God that surpasses all understanding, keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”[13] Amen.
[1] 2 Corinthians 1:2
[2] Psalm 19:14
[3] Rössner, “Martin Luther and the Making of the Modern Economic Mind.”
[4] Ibid.
[5] Mangeloja, Martin Luther’s Business Ethics and the Economic Utopia.
[6] Matthew 10:42
[7] Romans 6:16-18
[8] Romans 6:23
[9] Jeremiah 28:9
[10] Cf. Romans 6:14
[11] Deuteronomy 5:21
[12] Genesis 3:6
[13] Philippians 4:7
