Values: Mine, Paul's, Matthew's

God’s grace, peace and mercy be with you. … My theme is Value, Pauline Values, Matthean Values. My focus is Romans 6 and Matthew 10:24-25. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, the psalmist wrote, “I rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’” Now that our feet are within your gates, we rejoice to hear your Word. As we listen, may your Spirit enlighten our minds and move our hearts to love deeply as Jesus loved. This we pray to you, Most Holy Trinity. Amen.

You got a happy dance? Several years ago, the singer Pharrell recorded a huge hit song called “Happy.” His “Happy” video features people dancing the 4-minute song for 24 hours. A 24-hour video!

Of course, Happy is not the first song to promote happiness. The list includes Don’t Worry, Be Happy; Happy Together; You’ve Made Me So Very Happy; The Happiest Girl in the Whole USA; Happy Days; and Oh Happy Day.

I begin a sermon on values with happy thoughts because many view happiness as a personal value. So, let us look at Value, Pauline Values, Matthean Values, and because we are planning summer vacations, I am going to refill your Prescription for Spiritual Laziness, which may be your key to happiness.

First, value. Although our founding fathers penned “pursuit of happiness” into the Declaration of Independence, they did not define it as we do. Definitions evolve. For example, the word nice comes from the Latin word nescius meaning “ignorant.” In the 14^th century, it meant “foolish,” then evolved to mean cowardice, and then shyness. Today, when someone says you are nice, you take it as a compliment.

In the context of the Declaration of Independence, happiness was about one’s contribution to society rather than pursuit of self-gratification. I contribute to society the personal values I learned and modeled as a child. These personal values provide an internal reference for what is good. In a society where people come from various ethnic and religious backgrounds, our cultural values emphasize those that people broadly share.

We derive our Christian values from the teachings of Jesus and from Christian teachers throughout the history of our religion. What we believe and practice as Lutherans is not exactly what Baptists, Methodists or other Christians believe and practice, but we share some basic Christian values.

To sort out Christian values, we return to our roots, and turn to my second point – Pauline values.

Paul came to believe, practice and hand on to Jesus’ early followers what the Holy Spirit revealed to him as essential. He was sophisticated enough to understand that the teachings of Jesus, like definitions, may not mean the same thing to all people.

Learned, practicing 1^st- century Jews in Jerusalem understood the deeper meaning of Jesus’ Last Supper differently than Gentile converts reared to worship other gods. Hence, Paul taught a new theology of baptism and communion that Jews and Gentiles alike understood and appropriated.

Paul did the same with sin and grace, redemption and sanctification. He conveyed to cultures that lacked Scripture the concept that humans are sinful by nature and by choice. Once he presented this, Paul could teach that because our loving God values us, He redeemed us through His Son.

Today, we take for granted Paul’s teaching on sin, redemption, baptism and Christian values. We even take for granted a brand-new term that Paul coined – sanctification.

Do we fully understand what Paul meant when he wrote to the Romans (6:16) to present yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification? … Probably not. So, let me tell you briefly about Minh Dang, a woman I met while I was working in Berkeley CA. She was a graduate student at UC Berkeley. Minh was enslaved by her parents until she broke free as an adult. Minh understands the concept of slavery quite differently than we do. Like other children whose parents have no values, Minh was literally used as a source of income by her parents. Most of us have no personal experience of what it means to be a slave.

I see myself as master of my own destiny. No one tells me how to live, how to think, how to behave. I am my own man. That makes it difficult to grasp the meaning of Paul’s words. We might understand the concept of presenting ourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification if we considered ourselves not as slaves but as addicts.

In the Roman Empire, addicts were bankrupt people given as slaves to their creditors. Addict comes from the Latin addictus, meaning “a debtor awarded as a slave to his creditor.” In the 1600s, it meant giving yourself to someone or some practice. By the 1900s, addict became associated with dependency on drugs.

So, when Paul says we are slaves to sin, he means addicted to sin. This addiction extends beyond acts of murder, theft, adultery or gossip, and goes to the heart of sin – idolatry. … We are addicted to thinking that we control our own destiny. God is not my master. I have no master. I am my own master.

From his encounter with the Risen Christ, Paul knew better. As sinners whose debt was paid through the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, we, the baptized, should live as addicts of the Holy Trinity. That is what “present yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification” means. You are addicted to God. As a drug controls the life of an addict, the Trinity controls the life of a Christian. Addiction to God leads me to my third point, Matthean values.

The kernel of today’s Gospel is that Christians resemble their Teacher and Master, Jesus Christ. When baptized, we put on Christ, but often fail to resemble Him. By grace, Christians become more like Christ by prayerfully reading God’s Word and receiving Holy Communion.

Paul pointed out that God favored the Jews over Gentiles because He chose them and remained faithfully present to them. We are favored because God remains faithfully present to us through Word and Sacrament. Word and Sacrament are essential to our worship and life. They are essential to other Christians as they too attempt to become more like Christ. However, other denominations interpret Word and Sacrament differently.

We should understand that although we agree with denominations whose personal and communal values are formed by the teachings of Christ, when it comes to the interpretation of Word and Sacrament, we view these quite differently. Some denominations, such as Methodists and Presbyterians, teach that Christ is only symbolically present in Holy Communion. They practice open Communion even for the unbaptized.

We have more than a symbolic presence. We have the true Body and Blood of Christ in, with and under the forms of bread and wine. Because that true Body and Blood of Christ is available to us and because God calls us to be like our Teacher and Master, think how deep our relationship with God could be if we made ourselves present to Him in Word and Sacrament?

Imagine how deep your relationships would be if you made yourself present to each member of your family. Now, imagine yourself as the hot water heater. Everyone takes for granted the hot water heater. No one notices it until something is wrong. We all have relationships like that. Family members take us for granted or never notice something is wrong until we break down.

How do we respond when faithful friends and family members treat us like the hot water heater? How does God respond when we treat Him like a hot water heater? Ponder that question this week.

Now that summer is officially here and many will soon observe Independence Day, consider that we take for granted the inalienable rights from God as we do God Himself. For some, Independence Day is just part of summer vacation – taking time away to relax. Unfortunately, for some relaxing means not only taking time away from work, but also from God, Word and Sacrament. Like our relationship with the hot water heater, we tend to become spiritual lazy.

Oswald Chambers once wrote, “We are all capable of being spiritually lazy saints.” We are all capable of being spiritually lazy saints. So, let me tell you the story of a man who never became spiritually lazy.

Maximillian Kolbe was born in Poland in 1894. As a young man, he saw religious indifference as the deadliest poison of his day. A missionary in Japan in the early 30’s, he returned to Poland to found a newspaper and radio station, tools to spread the Gospel and to speak out against Nazi atrocities.

In 1941, the Nazis arrested Kolbe and incarcerated him at Auschwitz. That July, a prisoner escaped. As punishment, the commandant announced 10 men would die. As the 10 were being marched away to the starvation bunkers, Kolbe, Prisoner Number 16670, stepped from the line, and requested, “I would like to take that man’s place. He has a wife and children.” The dumbfounded commandant kicked the doomed sergeant out of line and ordered Kolbe to go with the nine. They were stripped naked as their slow starvation began in darkness. … There was no screaming from the prisoners. Instead, they raised their spirits by singing. By August 14, the jailer came to finish off Kolbe as he sat in a corner praying. Kolbe lifted his fleshless arm to receive the bite of the hypodermic needle filled with carbolic acid. The Nazis burned his body with all the others.

Kolbe could not have witnessed for Christ in Auschwitz if he had not formed a deep, full, rich intimate relationship with Him throughout his life. We may never find ourselves condemned to death by starvation or as slaves to cruel masters, but daily we have the opportunity to witness for Christ.

When faced with adversity – religious harassment, ethnic persecution, war, death, divorce, faithless family and friends, unemployment, poverty, sickness, incurable disease and impending death – we have the opportunity to witness for Christ, our Master and Teacher. In order to do so, experience tells me that at a certain point we need to return to those practices that strengthened us before we became spiritually lazy.

It's like a prescription. We reach appoint when we need it refilled. Several weeks ago, I offered you the prescription of five P’s of Prayer: Passage, Place, Posture, Presence and Passage. You can go back and re-read or watch the sermon if you need a refill.

Now, next month also means that Steelers training camp will begin, So, if you are satisfied with your present relationship with God and are living a respectable Christian life, consider these words of the late, great Chuck Noll, the only NFL coach to win four Super Bowls and lose none. Asked at his first news conference if his goal was to make the Steelers respectable, Noll said, “Respectability? Who wants to be respectable? That's spoken like a true loser.”

Friends, don’t settle for respectability. Be a champion for Christ. Step out of line and witness for Christ in the manner Maximillian Kolbe did. Like a true champion, witness for our Teacher and Master, Jesus Christ, and not Satan, sin and self. … We are more likely to witness for Christ if we are addicted to Him and not ourselves. When we step forward in faith and love, the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.