In Praise of The Gifts

Text: Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4
Theme: “In Praise of The Gifts”
The Thirty First Sunday In Ordinary Time
The Twenty Third Sunday After Pentecost
Reformation/All Saints Sunday
October 31, 2010
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
The Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

+In the Name of Jesus+

Just a few moments ago, you heard couple of literary snippets from the book of Habakkuk in the Old Testament. Only three chapters long, the book itself is a quick read; it’s almost like a laminated pamphlet! It is named for the prophet, Habakkuk, whose prophecy is contained in the book. The name Habakkuk means “one who embraces.” Another word for embrace is hug, and if ever anyone could have used a whopper of a hug it was Habakkuk.

If your situation in life – or even life itself – has ever danced on your last nerve; if life has ever wiped the floor with your soul and then wiped it again so as not to leave a waxy yellow build-up; if you’ve ever had a bone to pick with the Lord and wanted to engage in a bit of argument with the most high God, then Habakkuk might be your guy. It may be just your kind of book – and you can even read it all after Sunday brunch and before the Halloween trick-or-treaters come knocking. Habakkuk, as it turns out, has some issues he needs to get on the table and discuss; there are complaints to register, and, at first, he comes off sounding rather cranky, irritable, and agitated in the way he registers them. But at the end of the book, though, all of that is yesterday’s news. He says:

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights.

Hooray for Habakkuk! Good for him. Give me some of what he has and maybe a hug to go with it – as his name implies! What in the dickens brought Habakkuk from the point of cranky, irritable, and agitated to the point of supreme joy, strength, and confidence in the Lord? What put the pep in his step? Well, the answer is that he spotted the gift! The good news is that the same gift is for us too. What’s left is to unwrap and unpack the gift. If today’s message can be of assistance in this, then it will have achieved its purpose.

But now, what of carved pumpkins, outdoor decorations, and trips down the candy aisle at Kroger and Albertson’s? It all says that it’s Halloween today! Halloween is short for Hallow Evening. Hallow Evening is short for the Eve of All Hallows Day. All Hallows Day is also called All Saints Day, and that, on the calendar, is tomorrow, November 1st. It has been observed in the western church – including Roman Catholic and, later, Protestant congregations – since the 8th century A.D. We Protestant/Reformed/Presbyterian-types, through the years, have not observed the day to pray for the dead. Rather, it is an occasion to remember our loved ones in the faith who have gone before us and thank God for their lives and example. A lovely tradition, which we observe today, is the reading of the names of those among us who have died in the past year and the ringing of the bell after each name is read.

Also, this morning’s observance and celebration of All Saints is linked with the observance and celebration of Reformation Day! October 31st, the Eve of All Saints, was the occasion, four hundred ninety three years ago, when the Roman Catholic monk-turned-university professor, Martin Luther, posted a document on the front door of the Schlosskirche, the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany. The document is known as the Ninety-Five Theses or Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences. If that sounds like a mouthful and a boring smidge of history, it’s okay. Just know that, like Habakkuk, Luther had some gripes of his own which made him cranky, irritable, and agitated.

Luther was, well, not a Presbyterian, and neither was he a Lutheran! He was about as Roman Catholic as you can get, and I don’t say that in order to bad mouth our Catholic friends. You see, not only was he Roman Catholic, he was a Roman Catholic monk. Monks lived in monasteries. What did monks do? Monks studied the Bible and the great theologians, and they worshipped, prayed, and worked for the glory of God and to make life better for the people, like you and me, who sat in the pews. And not only was he a monk, he had decided to become an Augustinian monk! As an Augustinian monk, your namesake was St. Augustine, one of the great theologians in the early Christian church. At the heart of St. Augustine’s teaching was the almighty power and love of God. The idea – the whole trick in the game and the reason why we exist -- was to get on the good side of that power and love, and then you might have a chance to be saved. If you’re on the bad side of the power and the love, you’re toast. But if you’re on the good side, it’s high fives all around!
Luther gave it as good a shot as anyone ever could to get on the good side of that power and love. In later years, Luther reflected on those days as a monk. He wrote, “If anyone could have gained heaven as a monk, then I would indeed have been among them.” You’d think all the hard, good work and sacrifices Luther made would be rewarded, but they were not. Luther, reflecting on the same time in his life with all of his frenzied effort, said: “I lost touch with Christ the Savior and Comforter, and made of him the jailor and hangman of my poor soul.”

But it wasn’t only what was going on in Luther’s head -- the personal struggles -- that had him all in a snit. Events going on around him also shook him to the core. Those events were very closely related to something that happens at worship here every Sunday. I speak of the confession of sins and the declaration of pardon. Officials in the Catholic Church of Luther’s Day were selling sheets of paper called indulgences. The proceeds of the sale went to help defray the cost of the construction of St. Peter’s basilica in Rome. (That’s the place where the pope celebrates midnight mass every Christmas Eve.) Without getting into an extended history lesson this morning, the faithful Christians of Luther’s day were being taught by their leaders that they could literally purchase, with money, the forgiveness of sins – for themselves and for their loved ones who had previously died. They were basically life insurance policies – eternal life insurance policies. Luther’s response to this error was The Ninety-Five Theses.

Lest you think this all belongs on a dusty bookshelf marked “church history”, let me bring it into the here and now. A good question is: what would you pay for a clear conscience? Luther, in effect, said: “That’s not an option. You can’t pay for that.”

So what then? Does one double-down on or double-up the effort in trying to be a better Christian? Does God help those who help themselves? Will hard work, good work, and sacrifice do the trick? Will that wipe away the last vestiges of a troubled soul and a dirty conscience? Could we support another worthwhile charity? Might you then be a fine little modern Augustinian and be on the good side of almighty power and love? If we answer yes to any of these, then I fear that Christ may still be – to one extent or another -- the “jailor” and the “hangman.”

Not long ago, I was asked what we might do here at First Presbyterian to attract more Bible-believing young people to our congregation. It’s a good question, and I know where those who asked it are coming from. But I suspect that Bible-believing young people – if they truly believe the great truths of the Bible -- are probably already in a Christian congregation. I don’t want to overlook any “demographic” – including that of Bible-believing young people. But I really, really, really don’t want to overlook another “demographic.” Let me explain.

In my early years of public ministry, during the ten years when I was out of public ministry, and even now, I run into folks, quite regularly, who have come to see Christ, if truth be told, as a “hangman” and His Church as a “jailor.” Most of these people are my age or a little younger or older. Almost to a person, they have come from religious backgrounds that came off to them as rigid, legalistic, doctrinaire, authoritarian, judgmental, and – maybe worst of all – boring and irrelevant. When they came of age, they pretty much voted with their feet and left the church. Since then, they have all but disappeared into our culture that is increasingly secular, agnostic, and post-Christian. Their philosophy – which is very simple and genuinely held – was captured fairly well, I think, by country singer Jerry Jeff Walker when he sang:

Just gettin' by on gettin' by's my stock and trade
Livin' it day to day
Pickin' up the pieces where ever they fall
Just lettin' it roll lettin' the high times carry the load
I'm livin' my life easy come easy go.

If that philosophy makes sense and rings true to any one of you today, I want to ask you – with as much earnestness as I can command – this question: what happens when even the high times can no longer carry the load? Set aside religion, spirituality and all of that for just a moment and consider: what happens when life itself – with all its randomness; with its limits; with its dire diagnoses’; with its political and economic unrest; with all its faults, failures, and even fatalities – becomes “jailor” and “hangman”?

What then? Especially then, spot the gift; receive the gift; unwrap the gift; unpack the gift; use the gift; take the gift and run with it! What is that gift?

Habakkuk spotted it; Luther rediscovered it; the great reformers of every age trumpeted it; the Holy Spirit delivers it in words that go like this: “The just shall live by faith!” The gift is faith! “By grace are you saved through faith – and this is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God. It is not of works – lest anyone should boast.”

By the time Luther nailed his theses to the church door, he didn’t quite have the gift unpacked. But he was getting closer. In theses ninety two and ninety three, he wrote: “Away then with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, ‘Peace, peace,’ and there is no peace. Blessed be all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, ‘Cross, cross,’ and there is no cross!”

There was no cross, ultimately, for the people of Christ, but there most certainly was a cross for Jesus Christ, and he endured every shameful, awful, damning, lethal bit of it. When it finally dawned on Luther that the cross was Christ’s alone and not Luther living and dying in conformity with it, then all the bells and whistles started gloriously going off and we had a reformation! The Gospel rang true again!

“The just shall live by faith” – faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us. A jailer or a hangman? No. The Savior and the Comforter? Yes. Thank God it is yes!