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Showing posts with label works. Show all posts
Showing posts with label works. Show all posts

Saturday, March 10, 2018

Are you saved? Dwelling with God on the 4th Sunday of Lent



“For we are His handiwork, created in
Christ Jesus for the good works that
God has prepared in advance, that we
should live in them.” –Ephesians 4:10


Recently I have been doing a bit of driving –trips to the grocery store, the therapist, the pharmacy, down to Montrose to hear a lecture about Flannery O’Connor, even a drive to and from Dallas for a college visit.  And during these drives –especially if I am alone at night—I tend to turn on one of the Christian radio stations to hear someone preach about God. I started this habit back in my twenties. It just seemed more interesting than most pop music.  Regardless, the habit has stuck.  And I can be inspired by and learn something new from even the simplest sermon (or lesson). I’m not too picky. I like R.C. Sproul (Reformed), Chuck Swindall (Evangelical), Ed Young (Baptist), Charles Stanley (Southern Baptist), and a couple weeks ago I heard a woman from Africa teaching lessons from Genesis 12 and the call of “Papa Abraham.” I had never considered thinking of Abraham as “Papa Abraham,” but I liked it.  What first appealed to me was simply the “exotic” sound of her voice. It was something different from the usually Southern twang of many of these ministers.  But, I also liked the simple lessons about faith and following God that she was deriving from just a very few verses about “Papa Abraham.” So, I kept listening.
But, as I listen to these shows more than occasionally I will hear someone bring up the arguments of the Reformation as if they were still a sore subject. The other night, driving home from Sugarland I heard a preacher (not sure of the name) preaching on Revelations. As I listened he quickly came to the question of the whore of Babylon and how it was –what he called—the church of Rome.  On one level he was making a pretty good case starting with Constantine and the conversion of Rome; dwelling with particular emphasis on the mass baptism of Constantine’s army as a sign of the early Church getting way off on an extremely wrong foot.  
            I’m not certain if it was the same guy, but on another evening I heard the Church of Rome condemned for keeping the Bible out of the hands of the common people for so many centuries: 1. keeping it in Latin, and 2. keeping the right (or authority) to interpret scripture unto itself. Whether it was the same guy, it was definitely the same channel. I’ve head other ministers on that station (ministers I respect –like Sproul) deride the Roman Catholic church for its corruption and especially for still teaching that works are required for salvation.  And as I listen, I am often struck by the thought: you’re over-simplifying! It seems to me that these ministers were probably taught something during seminary and are simply repeating it without checking to see if its true (or ever was), and what the other side has to say for itself.  Heck, they don’t even acknowledge that the Lutherans and the Roman Catholics signed a Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification back in 1999 (when John Paull II was still Pope).
            To be fair, I’ve also heard Catholic radio personalities (on EWTN) do the same thing from the other side.  They ridicule or deride their Protestant brethren for the teaching of justification by faith, and speak disdainfully of the very idea of sola scriptura –oversimplifying everything Luther or Calvin or even Barth might have taught. 
It feels like (on both sides) there is a refusal to listen, to engage the actual ideas of the other side, and a dangerous tendency to oversimplify. Who needs to actually read and contemplate the ideas of Luther or Calvin or a papal encyclical, when all you’re looking for is a straw man to knock over with a blast of your own hot air?    
            For instance, the other night on EWTN a Catholic apologist was citing several scripture passages as proof that Luther was all wrong about faith alone, and that clearly Jesus, Himself, was going to be looking at our works when it came time for the last judgment.
            For a Roman Catholic to think that Luther (or Lutherans) have failed to notice (or consider) Matthew 25: 31-46 is just absurd. A quick Google search will bring up articles and sermons by contemporary Protestant ministers preaching and teaching on the importance of works of mercy and love.  But look a little further and we find that Luther addressed this also; as did Calvin; with grace and inspiring insight. Whether we agree with an interpretation or not, what you will find in these writings is a brother or sister sincerely seeking God’s will and not just a cartoon enemy to be taped to a theological dart board.
The same could be said of those who have never read an encyclical or Papal letter, or the Catechism of the Catholic Church, yet wants to criticize her teachings. But who has time to consider what the other side of an issue when we are all in such a rush to jump to conclusions?
Which –by way of a lengthy introduction—brings me back to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians and the very question of “good works.”
Paul states here that we are “saved through faith” (points for Luther & JPII) and adds that our faith comes not through any effort on our part, but as a “gift of God.”  How much clearer does the teacher have to be here? Suddenly I am wondering why the whole Reformation couldn’t have been handled over in an afternoon at the pub; a couple of pitchers of ale, a block of Limburger and a loaf of pumpernickel and it’s done! Thomas Moore still has his head and Servetus still… well, never mind. As we know, the pub was probably closed for a religious holiday.
(As a side-note, it is interesting what the church has paired this reading with, a passage from Second Chronicles (cf.36:14-16; 19-23) about the “works” of God’s people when they are left to their own devices: abominations and the polluting of the temple. Even when God sends prophets with warnings the people react only with mockery and scoffing. Sound familiar? So, God sends them the Babylonians and a little bit of captivity, as a gift –one might say; a very hard kind of grace.)
But then, what does all this say to us about our works? Aren’t they worth something? Or why bother?
Well, what does Paul say?  Paul says this: our works were prepared for us by God, “that we should live in them.” Our works are where we are to dwell –prepared for us before we were born.  What does that mean: “…Prepared in advance that we should live in them?”
I propose that the answer is found not in theological debates or creeds or encyclicals and catechisms. It is found in Jesus. In the person of Christ.  In the time of fulfillment personified; in the Kingdom of God made flesh.
When the “sheep” in the parable of the last judgment ask the King: When did we see you hungry and feed you? Naked and give you clothes? A stranger and make you welcome? A prisoner and visit you? Basically, they are asking Jesus: When, Lord, were we in your presence? When were we dwelling in the Kingdom of God? Living in the time of fulfillment? And what does Jesus say? He responds:
“In truth I tell you, when you did this for the least
Of these my brothers, you did it for me…” (Mt. 25:40)
Basically, He is answering: when you did this and this and… 
True, those works may not earn the Kingdom of God, but that may not be the point. The point just might be that they are the Kingdom of God. (How very Dante-esque, I must say!)

So, if we’ve signed a declaration of agreement, why do Catholics and Protestants keep arguing about these things? And why do they always seem to be scoffing and deriding each other’s ideas?  Why won’t they just sit down with a pitcher of Shiner and a plate of nachos and listen to each other? That’s probably a discussion for another time, but it reminds me of something Jesus says in Sunday’s Gospel:
“…the people preferred darkness.” (Jn 3:19)