“Milk toast.” Milk toast—that’s the way I found myself describing First Thessalonians to someone earlier this week. We’ve spent the last five weeks or so reading through this letter and hearing St. Paul’s encouraging pastoral words, and today we reach the end of the letter. And let’s be honest, although there is some interesting stuff in this letter, it’s probably safe to say that this is not the most exciting book of the Bible. If this was the only letter that we had of St. Paul’s, we might think he was sort of a milk toast kind of person, not a whole lot of character, maybe a little bland. Fortunately, the Bible contains plenty of more dramatic letters in which St. Paul gets all worked up and has to put people in their place. The letters to the Corinthians or the Galatians are more exciting documents, and we can really see Paul’s character coming through there.

And of course we like exciting, don’t we? We like to be entertained, and so most of us would rather read a ticked-off letter to the Galatians than a nice encouraging note to the Thessalonians. Most of us would also rather watch “Jersey Shore” than “The Waltons.” (And if you don’t know what either of those TV shows are, then good for you for not watching too much TV!) But the point is we like drama. Even bad drama, it’s like a train wreck or a car crash that you just can’t look away from. We like to be entertained. And First Thessalonians doesn’t have too much entertainment value…. Here at the conclusion of this letter, the whole thing can seem just a little bit too much like milk toast—which if you’re wondering, really is what it sounds like, toasted bread in warm milk—possibly comforting, even nourishing, but not terribly exciting.

But let’s take a look at the end of this letter together. Paul picks up where we left off last week, talking about the great Day of the Lord, when Jesus will return and bring to completion the work he began with his death and resurrection. And St. Paul concludes this letter to the Thessalonian church by giving some final instructions about how to live in light of this coming Day of the Lord. Pretty standard Christian teaching.

What I want to point out is how many times Paul refers to the church as a family. He uses the word “brothers” over and over again, because his understanding of the church is that we are all brothers and sisters in the family of God. Literally every other verse—seven times in the fifteen verses that we read—Paul refers to the church as “brothers,” or “sons.” Brothers, sons, siblings, children. For St. Paul the church is a family.

The church is the family of God. And as we all know, a great deal of family life is “milk toast,” isn’t it? Not every minute of family life is exciting—at least hopefully it’s not, because otherwise we’d go crazy. What defines us as the people of God is not so much the flashy events or exciting moments, but rather the daily grind of our life together. That’s when you really see who we are as a family. It may be milk toast, but consistent love and encouragement in the faith, like this letter to the Thessalonians, this is the heartbeat of our family life together. So don’t knock milk toast. It’s the “boring” stuff of everyday life that is actually most important to pay attention to. After all we don’t know when the Lord will return; chances are it will be at one of these boring, humdrum moments of everyday life.

Think of soldiers. Paul uses this imagery as well. We often romanticize the life of soldiers because we’ve seen too many movies and played too many video games. And sure it is true that from time to time there is the hellish excitement of battle. But for every dramatic, exciting minute that a soldier experiences, there are hundreds and hundreds of hours of just waiting, standing at the ready, trying to stay awake and alert. Boring, humdrum moments.

I think this is what St. Paul has in mind in verse 6, when he tells us not to fall asleep, but to be alert and self-controlled. He uses the imagery of a soldier. He wants us to keep our “armor” on at all times. He calls faith and love a “breastplate” and the hope of salvation a “helmet.” St. Paul thinks that faith and love and the Christian hope we have in Jesus are what will offer us armored protection on the Day of the Lord. Faith, love, and hope, he says. These are what we are supposed to help encourage in each other as Christians.

This is really what this letter has been all about: encouraging us to remain steadfast in the faith, placing all our hope in Jesus. Like a soldier constantly nudging his buddy to keep him awake and alert and ready, so St. Paul tells us to encourage one another and build each other up, so that we will be ready to meet our Maker, whether that is when we die and fall asleep in him, or when he comes again in glory on the great Day of the Lord. Not terribly exciting work, keeping each other “awake” in the faith, and ready for the Lord’s return, but a very important part of our family life as the people of God.

I want to close by saying a word of transition into Holy Communion. We do this thing called Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper every week, and we all have a sense that it’s important and that what’s going on here is a holy thing. But I think we can also forget sometimes what it’s all about.

This is a symbol of our family life together. Remember, although it doesn’t entirely look like it, this is a meal. It’s the Lord’s Supper. And there isn’t much more typical of everyday life than a meal. As a family, we share this meal together every Sunday, and the center of the whole thing is exactly what we’ve just been talking about: nourishing our faith in Jesus, keeping our Christian hope alive, and alert, and ready for the Lord’s return. This meal nourishes us spiritually by communicating to us the gift that our Lord gave us on the cross.

Jesus says we are supposed to do this “in remembrance” of him, to remember him, to keep our faith in him fresh and alive. We have been given this ritual as a reminder of the hope we have in him who “died for us so that we may live together with him.” So, although this is a holy and somewhat mysterious meal, it’s not magic. Jesus gave us his life on the cross, and this meal is how we receive that gift through faith. The good news about what Jesus did for us in his death and resurrection—what we receive in this bread and wine—this faith in Jesus is what makes us ready for the final Banquet we will share in heaven, when we will feast and enjoy life together with the Lord forever. Amen? Amen.

And don’t worry, I promise to keep using our normal bread for Communion; we will not be switching to milk toast.

I have shared before the fact that although I tried to play it cool throughout my academic career, the truth is that from first grade through graduate school, I was (and still am) one of those annoying smarty-pants kids who always has the right answer (or at least thinks he does). And that meant that I almost always got really good grades on tests and papers and all that schoolwork kind of stuff. And it was always secretly frustrating to me whenever a teacher would curve a test after I had done well. I felt like if I was able to get an A without the grades being curved, then there should be no curve and the people who failed should have to live with it. Now, I never admitted my secret resentment of curved grades because that’s an excellent way to get beaten up in the parking lot after school. But I felt cheated because I worked hard and did well, and other people didn’t do as well, but they got off easy because of the teacher’s generosity.

You may be able to tell already that I’m talking about the story that we read from Matthew’s Gospel today. You can earn your grades, or your denarius—a denarius was a day’s wages—you can earn your keep by working all day, and being smart, and having the right answers on the test. Or, you can get off easy and have your denarius handed to you on a golden platter simply because the master is generous, because the teacher is inclined not to fail anyone if possible.

The way our world works, generally speaking, is according to the principle of merit. Especially for Americans, we believe that people should work hard and be rewarded for their hard work, and that people who do not work as hard should not be rewarded the same way. You’re supposed to get a promotion based on your good merits, not because you’re related to the CEO. You supposed to get a merit scholarship because you merited it, you earned it, not because the scholarship people decided to grade on a curve and give everyone an award. Generally speaking, you get what you deserve in life. You get out what you put in. This is just the way the world works.

But here’s the problem: According to Jesus, this is not the way the kingdom of heaven works. The world may work according to the principle of merit. But the kingdom of heaven works according to a different principle. The kingdom of heaven works according to the principle of God’s grace, God’s unconditional favor. And that ticks some people off. If you’re a worker who slaved long and hard in a vineyard all day, and some guy next to you only got hired for the last hour, you’d be ticked off if you got paid the same wages. Most of us react to this story that Jesus tells in just the way he wants us to. It rubs us the wrong way because we’re used to thinking the way the world thinks, but that’s not the way the kingdom of heaven works. Look at verse 15: “Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money?” the landowner asks. “Or are you envious because I am generous?” I think some Christians are envious or upset with the idea of God being gracious toward certain people. I have often heard people grumble and say things like, “I just can’t believe God would forgive a murderer just because they asked for forgiveness.” But Jesus turns our normal way of thinking upside down. Because of the price that Jesus paid on the cross, God has the right to be gracious to whomever he wants. And are we going to be envious because God is generous?

It’s a beautiful thing actually. The kingdom of heaven works according to the principle of grace: God’s unmerited favor. From the world’s point of view, that turns everything upside down. The first are suddenly last and the last first. When we really understand the principle of God’s grace, suddenly everything gets reversed. Country club presidents suddenly start serving the neighborhood riff raff. We suddenly find ourselves able to forgive people, even when we are clearly in the right. We discover how to submit to one another out of love. Pride shrinks; life becomes less burdensome; and compassion replaces judgment. Because we realize that the eternal kingdom of heaven is governed not by any principle of merit or just deserts, but by the infinite, gracious love of God.

This principle of God’s grace is the distinctive mark of Christianity. Yes, like all other religions, Christianity teaches a way of life and morality. Yes, like all other religions, Christianity has something to say about the afterlife. But this biblical theme of God’s unconditional love, God’s grace, this is the hallmark of our faith. It is the chief characteristic of who Jesus is.

It was ultimately Jesus who was the epitome of the first made last. Jesus, the firstborn of all creation, the head of all things, the one who merited and earned more than anyone else, he chose to become last and to set aside every good thing that he deserved. And his decision to go to the cross and to take last place in the world, this purchased for us first place in the kingdom of heaven. Because of Jesus, we are the last who are made first; we all are the laborers who were paid without having to work. In this world it is a scandalous and contrary thing to say that the first shall be last and the last first. But it is also the express purpose of God. What we earn or achieve in this world will ultimately be set aside. What counts is simply our saying “yes,” and walking into the vineyard of the king who offers us everything for nothing. The kingdom of heaven has always worked according to the principle of God’s gracious love, and that is something for which we can be deeply, deeply thankful. Amen.

We are all brought up to believe certain things about the world. Most of us were taught that our solar system is made up of nine (or more recently, eight) planets, each of which has an orbit that revolves around the sun. But if we had been brought up 500 years ago, we would have been taught that the earth rests at the center of the universe and that everything, the sun, the moon, all the planets, revolve around us.In the 1500’s none of us would ever have believed Copernicus when he said that the earth revolves around the sun. That was completely upside down!But every so often there comes along some thinker who is able to see the world differently from the rest of us, and who eventually changes everything about the way we think. Just think how differently the generations after us might think about the world we live in now. Remember we also used to think that the earth was flat. Do you really suppose that somehow, in our generation, we’ve figured it all out? I don’t think so. I think there is yet a great deal that we believe about the world that future generations will find silly. There must be things that we look at upside down that someone will eventually turn right-side up.

It can be easy for us to lose sight of just how revolutionary a figure Jesus really was. He really did turn the world upside down. Look with me, if you will, at the passage that we just read from Matthew. This is the story of when Jesus called our patron, St. Peter,“Satan.” “Get behind me, Satan!” Jesus says. Pretty harsh. I mean, I’ve been called some pretty nasty things in life, but no one has ever called me Satan … at least not yet. So what’s going on here? What would make Jesus call one of his best friends such a despicable name? What was so wrong with the way that Peter saw the world that Jesus needed to turn it upside down?

If you remember back to last week, just before this passage that we read today, Peter has just confessed that Jesus is the Son of God, which is a good thing to confess. But the argument that Peter and Jesus are having today is an argument about what it means for Jesus to be the Son of God. Jesus says plainly that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer and die and then be raised to life again on the third day. But Peter doesn’t like that at all; Peter has a different idea about what it means for Jesus to be the Son of God. So, Peter takes Jesus aside gives him a piece of his mind, he “rebukes” him. (Can you imagine “rebuking” Jesus!?) You see, the way Peter sees the world, what Jesus should do is ride into Jerusalem, and take the city over by force, and rule the world as a successful king. But Jesus turns Peter’s world upside down: Jesus would ride into Jerusalem, and suffer and die, and save the world as a sacrificial king. This is the difference between looking at the world spiritually, as Jesus does, and looking at the world like Peter, as if all that mattered was worldly success. The things of God versus the things of men.

You see, contrary to Peter, Jesus had a deep faith that there is a way above all this worldly chaos, God’s way, a way of true life. And Jesus knew that the most powerful thing you can do with your life is sacrifice it to God. And in sacrificing his perfect life, Jesus bought us freedom, and spiritual communion with God, and everlasting life. And compared to the violent takeover that Peter had in mind, Jesus’s vision not only turned the world upside down, but also ultimately saved the world from sin and death. Peter wanted Jesus to go the way of the world, but Jesus knew that it is the way of the cross that leads to true life.

Now, you may be wondering what all this has to do with you. What different does it make that, two thousand years ago, Jesus chose the way of the cross? And I want to end on this note, just by saying two things. First of all, Jesus’s death and resurrection is the only thing powerful enough to be able to save us from as big a spiritual problem as sin and death. If Jesus had had the things of men in mind instead of the things of God, if Jesus had raised an army and marched into Jerusalem to be a worldly king—which is surely could have done if he wanted—this would still not have solved the problem of sin and death in the world. Only Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross can deal with our sin and wipe us clean; Jesus’s precious death is the only thing worth enough to purchase us everlasting life. So, for Jesus it had to be the way of the cross instead of the way of the world. And that had everything to do with us and our eternal salvation.

But there is another thing that we have to learn from this story. Immediately after talking about his own death on a cross, Jesus tells his disciples that if we are to follow him, we too must take the way of the cross. We too must allow Jesus to turn our worlds upside down. Naturally, we want to “save” our lives; like Peter, we want to have security and success and happiness in this world. It can be so easy to lose sight of God in the midst of the constant, hectic motion of our lives. But Jesus warns us that if we bury ourselves in our own lives, we will actually lose ourselves. Because the world does not in fact revolve around us, Jesus says, it revolves around God. And therefore, the most meaningful thing you can do with your life is present it as a sacrifice to God, give it back to him, spend your life with Christ for the sake of his kingdom. Because if we give our lives to God, as an open sacrifice to him, we will find that in the end, when the Son of Man returns in his Father’s glory with all his holy angels, we will enter into everlasting life, by the mighty power of his cross and resurrection. Amen.

There are these moments of profound connection that we experience every so often in life. Like the first time you see your own child and it dawns on you that your lives are now connected in an unspeakable way. Or when it occurs to you that the woman or man you are looking at is going to be your spouse forever. Or even just that silent moment of connection sitting across the table from a close friend, when you realize that there is a deep connection here, even if you can’t quite express it, you’re connected and that relationship makes a deep imprint on your life.

The moment of connection between Peter and Jesus that we read about today was one of those profound moments. There is a connection made here that changes Peter’s life forever. And in fact this moment is so powerful that it becomes the foundation or the “rock” on which to build not only for the rest of Peter’s life but for literally billions of people around the world since that day—including you and me. This moment is the foundation of the Church.

So what’s going on here that’s so powerful? What is it about this interaction between Jesus and Peter that is worth Jesus making such a fuss about? After all, he reacts pretty strongly to Peter’s answer about who Jesus is. When Peter says that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God, Jesus says that this was revealed to him directly from God the Father and that on the basis of this, Peter will be the rock upon which Jesus will build his Church, never to be overcome by the forces of hell. And through the ministry of this Church, God will bind evil and loose people from the power of death forever. That’s a pretty strong reaction to Peter’s simple statement about who Jesus is! So what’s going on here?

We can become desensitized to how powerful of a thing Peter is saying when he confesses Jesus to be the Christ and the Son of the living God. Christian faith is so familiar to us in our culture that it doesn’t even occur to us what a powerful thing it is to say that Jesus is the Christ. Western culture is so familiar with the claim that Jesus is the Son of God that even if people don’t believe that claim, it still doesn’t sound like that extreme of a thing to say, because we’ve heard it said so much. But it was an extreme thing for Peter to say. For the first time in history, Peter was confessing out loud that Jesus was the savior of the world, that he was the One the world has been waiting for throughout all of history, God himself in the flesh, come to save us. Now that is a pretty powerful thing to say when you stop to think about it.

But this connection between Jesus and Peter isn’t so foundational for the Church just because Peter happened to understand a certain point of doctrine. It’s not like this moment was so powerful just because Peter recited part of the Creed correctly. What’s going on here is way more personal than that, and that is what I think we most often miss in this story. This moment between Peter and Jesus is very very personal, intimate even. I mean picture Peter looking into Jesus’ eyes and saying what he does. “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” That is not just reciting a Creed; this is Peter confesses his complete trust in Jesus. “I trust you completely,” that is a profoundly vulnerable thing to say to someone. “You are my Savior; you are my God.” That isn’t something you just say with your head; that’s a heart thing. And that profound connection between Peter and Jesus becomes the example for the rest of the Church through the ages. That kind of personal trust in Jesus is the rock upon which the Church is built.

This is all as true today as it was on that day when Peter made his confession of faith. The living Church today, the global community of billions of Christians, rests upon the foundation of a personal trust in Jesus as the Christ. Almost all churches recite the Creed, but many Christians experience no personal connection to Jesus. Churches are strong and vibrant where people are personally, unashamedly connected to Jesus, and, on the other hand, churches wither and die where people no longer connect in a personal way to the faith that they confess. The foundation of the Church has always been a personal, life-changing trust in Jesus like what Peter expressed that day so long ago.

And this should come as really good news to us. It means that our vitality as a church does not depend upon us. Our life flows from the connection that we share with Jesus through faith. Simply by confessing our heartfelt, personal faith in Jesus as the Christ, who died and rose again for our sake—simply by being built upon this rock, we find ourselves forever secure, regardless of any appearances to the contrary. God has been gracious enough to send us his Son to accomplish everything necessary for us, and if we decide personally to put our trust in that gift, then he has promised us that no force of hell or sin or death will ever prevail against us, for in the gift of Jesus the Christ, we have been given the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Amen.

How many of you all remember a song or a rhyme that you were taught in grade school in order to learn some lesson or other? The ABC’s are probably the most obvious example, right? We’re all taught this song from a very early age in order to help us learn the alphabet. But the song I remember most from grade school was a catchy little number called “Conjunction Junction.” “Conjunction junction what’s your function”—and then you would learn all the functions that conjunctions can have in different sentences. To this day I remember that song and the grammar lesson that went with it. Most of us have some song, or some rhyme, that we still use to remember some bit of wisdom. (“Red sky at night, sailors’ delight,” or “Lefty loosy, righty tighty,” or, my personal favorite from summer camp, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down.”) Songs like this don’t just help you learn some lesson or other, they also make it interesting; they take the wisdom that you’re learning and sort of bring it to life.

Now, we’ve been spending these midsummer weeks looking together at selections from the book of Psalms, this biblical collection of poems and songs. And each week we’ve looked at a different type of psalm: hymns of praise, then lamentation prayers, then royal anthems. And this week we are looking at yet another type of psalm, which scholars call a “wisdom psalm.” And these wisdom psalms—not unlike the grade school songs that we all remember so fondly—they remind us of some lesson or other, but they do it in a way that brings the wisdom to life.

Look with me at the psalm that we said together today. The basic lesson that Psalm 1 teaches is not terribly interesting, basically it says, “It’s good to be good, and it’s bad to be bad.” But remember this is a lesson set to music, it’s a poem, so it has more to offer if you take the time to listen. They way that this psalm talks about the wisdom of goodness is actually quite beautiful.

The first two verses sort of set the whole thing up. Like I said, basically these first verses say, “It’s good to be good.” Happy are they who have not taken their place among the wicked, but instead delight in God’s law. “Goodness is good. It’s a happy thing.” Now here’s the problem: That’s a very nice thing to say. But it sure seems to me that the wicked are often the happy ones, while those who try to live according to God’s law actually wind up suffering for it. In my experience there are very few good deeds that go unpunished. So, tell me, silver-tongued poet of the psalms, how is it good to be good and bad to be bad, when it’s the righteous who suffer more often than not, while the wicked prosper? … And, actually, the rest of the psalm is a pretty good answer to this question.

The reason why goodness is wise and wickedness is foolish is because in the end, it is goodness that will endure while wickedness will wither away and die. Except of course this is a poem, so this point is made using the imagery of goodness like trees being securely planted versus wickedness like chaff being blown away by the wind. The Lord knows the way of the righteous; their future is secure. But the way of the wicked is doomed. In the midst of a world in which wickedness so often seems to prosper, a song like this is a reality check. It’s a reminder of where the universe is headed, which is most certainly in favor of righteousness not wickedness.

I remember in seminary seeing a book titled “With the Grain of the Universe.” Now, I never read that book, but I do know what it’s about, and I know what the author was getting at. The point is that when we live according to God’s intentions for us, then we are living with the grain of the universe. On the other hand, when we devote ourselves to wickedness, in whatever form, we are working against the grain. And this is precisely the point that the psalmist is making. If you devote yourself to God’s ways, then despite present appearances, you are living with the enduring grain of the universe, and that is a very good thing.

African slaves sang very similar songs as they worked in cotton fields before the Civil War. In so many Negro spirituals, they sang about the Lord’s return and the vindication that would be theirs when Jesus set all things right. It certainly looked like the wicked were the ones prospering while the innocent suffered, but songs like this were a reality check, a reminder that despite present appearances, God really is in control, and therefore in the larger scheme of things, goodness really is good, and wickedness really is bad. So, as you come across psalms like this one that talk about how happy a thing it is to be on God’s side, keep the larger scheme of the universe in the forefront of your mind, then maybe we’ll see the psalmist’s point.

Those singing slaves did the best thing a Christian can possibly do with the world around them, which is to remember that everything finds its answer in Jesus. Ultimately, it’s Jesus who proves this psalm to be true. In his earthly life, it certainly did not look like being righteous got him very far. In fact, righteousness got Jesus crucified. But even as he hung on that tree, he was himself a tree firmly planted, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither. Nothing, not even death, could uproot him. In Jesus, righteousness was proven victorious when he rose on the third day. Despite all appearances—even in the face of death—goodness is always the wiser path, while wickedness is always doomed. The death and resurrection of our Lord decisively proved the psalmist’s point, once and for all.

Of course all this can be not only a comforting word, but also a chilling one when we remember the fact that we are not righteous. St. Paul says that there is no one righteous; none of us live up to God’s expectations, which means that in this psalm we would probably do better to identify with the wicked rather than with the righteous—were it not for Jesus. Again, even this finds its answer is Jesus. When we read psalms like this one that speak in favor of the righteous, we have to remember that we read these psalms as people who are united to Jesus by faith. On our own, we do not have the righteousness that it would take to be on the right side of things in this psalm. And so Jesus offers us his righteousness. On the cross, Jesus takes on our wickedness so that we don’t have to be “doomed” (in the words of the psalmist). Instead, Jesus credits us with his righteousness, so that as a free gift from God, we can be planted like trees beside God’s everlasting streams of living water, bearing good fruit in due season. In him, every good thing we do shall prosper, whether we get to see it or not. And, that, brothers and sisters, is a very happy song to sing. Amen.

So, last week we began a sermon series focusing on different selections from the book of Psalms. And we talked a little bit about how this book of the Bible is maybe best understood as sort of a “greatest hits” compilation of songs which the people of God have used in worship for thousands of years now. The song that we looked at last week was a simple hymn of praise, expressing love and devotion to God. And I invited us all to join the psalmist and purposefully express our love for God as a response to the love that he first showed us in Christ. So that “love song” was sort of the “opening track” on our “mix tape,” but this is a very diverse mix that we’re listening to…

One of the most interesting things about the psalms is how different they are from one another. I mean, you’ve got these happy-clappy feel-good songs right next to totally depressing songs that just go on and on complaining about how horrible life is. So you’ve got Brittany Spears, and Johnny Cash, and Beethoven all in the same collection. And that can be an emotional rollercoaster to listen to. It’s best to settle in with one psalm, one prayer, and soak in it for a while, and let this particular biblical prayer teach us something about how to pray.

So let’s look at today’s psalm. This prayer comes more from the Johnny Cash side of things. It’s kind of a slower, melancholy song. Scholars call this type of psalm an “individual lament,” which just means that it’s a song written by a person who had something to cry about. And, actually, there are more of this kind of psalm than any other. There are more psalms written to complain about something than there are any other type of prayer.

Most people have a bias against complaining. We do not like to hear people complain. (At least I don’t.) Especially in the church I hear a lot of talk about the “power of positive thinking,” and it can seem like the expectation is that we all be happy-faced cheery Christians all the time. I was told a couple of weeks back that there was a sign hanging outside a church not too far from here that said “Don’t be depressed, be blessed.” And yet the Bible doesn’t seem to teach that at all. The psalms show us that one of the blessings of being a Christian is that you can be depressed and bring that complaining, lamenting depression to God, without fear of judgment or embarrassment or shame. Now of course that doesn’t mean that we don’t want people to be healed of their depression, of course we do. But the point is, psalms like this one give us permission to express to God whatever sadness and grief and confusion we experience in life. “How long, O Lord?” the psalmist cries out. “How long will you hide your face from me? How long shall I have grief in my heart, day after day?” So, we may have a bias against complaining, but God doesn’t. God is willing to hear whatever we’re thinking and feeling: good, bad, and ugly. And let’s be honest, some of the feelings that we have are really ugly.

This is a bit of an aside, but I want to say a word about enemies since this psalm mentioned enemies more than once. In the psalms, it gets really ugly when some of the psalmists express their feelings about their enemies. For example, Psalm 137 was written by someone who had been forced into captivity when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem. And in the midst of praying, the psalmist curses Babylon, saying, “Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against a rock.” Now, it doesn’t get much uglier than praying for your enemies’ children to be slaughtered, and yet there it is, right smack in the middle of the Bible. I’m always a little amused when people are paranoid about saying bad words in church, when the truth is that the Bible has way worse stuff in it than most Christians like to admit.

Here’s the thing: We know it’s not good to cultivate hate for our enemies, and Jesus tells us not to; he tells us to pray for them and to love them. However, the reality is that we’re sinners, and we do sometimes feel hatred toward people. And what the psalms can teach us is how to bring that stuff to God. No, it’s not a good thing to wish harm on someone, but if that’s how you feel, you might as well talk to God about it, you might as well tell God how you feel and leave it in his hands. That’s far better than storing up hatred in your heart and never dealing with it. What I find is that by turning to God with these sorts of awful feelings, more often than not, the prayer itself changes the way I feel, and I am able to find some measure of peace in trusting God to be the one to sort things out.

Now, Psalm 13 doesn’t have all that much to do with enemies, but some psalms do, and so I wanted to address it. The point of Psalm 13 seems to me to have more to do with hope. I think what psalms like this one teach us that one of the most effective things you can do to rekindle hope is to express your hopelessness to God. It’s kind of like throwing a temper tantrum or having a really good cry. Once you get it out of your system, you’re able to move on. Look how Psalm 13 progresses. It goes from a bitter complaint of “How long, O Lord?” to “I will put my trust in your mercy…” By the end of his tirade, the psalmist has gotten it out of his system and has found some measure of peace. The psalmist cries out, “How long, O Lord?” And God answers, “Not forever. My dear child, I promise it’s going to be okay.” In the very act of bringing his hopelessness to God, the psalmist finds hope, because he has found God.

Let me close by suggesting just a couple of ways that psalms like this one might find application in our everyday lives. First of all, be encouraged that you have permission to talk to God about whatever is on your heart, no matter how ugly that is sometimes. One of the most practical things that the psalms can do for us is give us words to pray when we are too upset to know how to pray. So next time you’re really upset, read through some of the psalms, you might be surprised to find out that you actually have a lot of company in the Bible; there are plenty of upset people in there who know how to talk to God about it.

Now, that said, the truth is we are not normally so upset as to pray a prayer like Psalm 13, crying out “How long, O Lord, how long!?” Most of us don’t wake up in the morning in that kind of distress. (At least I hope not!) When things are going okay for us, it can be hard to know what to do with psalms that complain and cry out to God like this. And I want to say that one of the things that we can do with psalms like this is to intentionally put ourselves in the shoes of people who are suffering, and to pray on their behalf. Even when we ourselves are okay, we can still pray psalms like this one in solidarity with people who do have grief in their hearts or who do have enemies threatening them. We may be alright, but there is always someone in our lives for whom we can offer a prayer like Psalm 13. So, when you’re upset, use these psalms to help you pray for yourself. And when you’re not upset, use these psalms to help you speak to God for someone else. You have permission to lament the broken things of this world, both in your own life and in the lives of the people around you.

As Christians, we know that the work that Jesus began on the cross and in his victorious resurrection—that work will be completed when he comes again in glory and snuffs out all evil and sets everything right once and for all. Along with the psalmists, and with all the rest of the people of God throughout all ages, we will find the answer to all our prayers in Christ. Amen.

As promised, today we begin a sermon series on the book of Psalms, which is the only book of the Bible that we read from every single Sunday as we gather for worship. And before we take a look at the particular psalm that we read together today, I want to say a word or two about the book of Psalms as a whole.

How many of you have a greatest hits album of your favorite band or musical artist? My dad has all these great vinyl records of the greatest hits of classic rock bands that were big when he was younger, and I remember digging them out when I was in high school and listening to the best of Journey or Led Zeppelin or Bob Dylan. Of course when I was growing up, the big thing to do was to create “mix tapes” of all your favorite songs by all you favorite artists recorded onto one cassette. And the highly sophisticated technology of cassette tapes allowed one to record dozens of different mixes for different occasions. So we spent hours making one mix tape of greatest hits for the bus ride to school, and another one for lounging on the beach, and another one for mowing the lawn, and so forth. And I must admit that I am glad that most of my mix tapes did not survive, because there was some pretty embarrassing stuff on there!

Now, the book of Psalms is exactly like a mix tape. (Well, maybe not exactly…) This book of the Bible is something like Israel’s greatest hits. This is a collection of songs that were sung by the Jewish people, written by various different poets at various different times in the course of Israelite history. And the people of God gradually compiled these greatest hits and edited them into a coherent book to be handed down through the ages. Specifically, this is a mix of worship and prayer songs. These are songs written to or about God. And the point is that these particular poems, these particular songs, were collected and made a part of our Bible in order to teach us how to worship and how to pray. The Psalms are recordings of authentic biblical worship, and we are invited to sing along with them. The Psalms invite us into that living, breathing relationship that God has always shared with his people, ultimately through Jesus Christ.

So, what about the psalm we read together today? What about Psalm 145? I chose to start this sermon series off by looking at maybe the most basic kind of psalm there is. Psalm 145 is, I think, what we most naturally think of when it comes to worship. This psalm is essentially a hymn. It’s just a very basic song of worship in praise of God. I know of at least one hymn in our hymnal that is simply a paraphrase of this psalm, and so this particular psalm is something that many of us have actually sung before, whether we knew it at the time or not. It’s simply a song in praise of God. “I will exalt you, O God my King … and praise your Name for ever and ever.”

What is the point of songs like this? What is the point of us singing hymns that simply tell how great God is? … Let me try to answer that question with another question: What is the point of a love song? Or, if you’re less musical, what is the point of a love letter? For anyone who has ever experienced romance, even just a small budding romance, there comes a point when you want to express your feelings to the other person. There comes a point when you want to praise them for being who they are, and so you sing a love song or you write a love letter with no other agenda than to express your adoration. Psalms of praise and worship are like that.

The Bible frequently refers to the people of God as God’s bride. And so the relationship between us as a church and God as our bridegroom is meant to look something like a marriage. And one of the things that characterize any healthy marriage is a heartfelt expression of love, plain and simple, no agenda, no strings attached, just, “I love you.” And psalms like this one show us what that can look like in our relationship with God in worship. Sometimes we just praise God for being who he is, plain and simple.

Usually, psalms of praise like this one will provide a whole list of reasons for worshiping God. So the psalmist says, “The Lord is gracious and full of compassion,” or, “The Lord is faithful in all his words and merciful in all his deeds.” These are the reason why we love our God so much that we can’t help but sing. The way the New Testament puts it is to say that “we love God because he first loved us.” And so, like everything else in Scripture and in history, all of this finds its ultimate meaning in Christ. In Christ we see how much God loves us and to what lengths he is willing to go for his bride. And seeing how much God loves us, we love him back and express it in our worship, simply praising him for being who he is and for doing what he has done for us on the cross. That is ultimately what psalms of praise and worship are about.

And that is what the psalmist invites us into. We are being invited to express our love for God a little more deeply. Practically that could mean any number of things for each of us. It could mean something as simple as literally writing a letter to God expressing your love for him. It could mean paying a little bit more attention to the words that we sing and pray, making sure that our hearts are in it when we worship together. It could mean setting aside time each day to reflect on God’s incredible love for you, knowing that as you dwell on God’s love for you, your love for God will only grow deeper, and that love will then overflow to all your other relationships and everyday business. As Christians we say that we desire to grow in our knowledge and love of God, and one of the ways to grow in your love for someone is simply to develop a habit of expressing your love for that person, and it works that way with God too. I don’t know what exactly the psalmist’s invitation means for each of you personally, but I do know that we as a church are being invited to express our love for God by praising him and worshiping him, plain and simple.

It is an ancient tradition to end hymns and psalms of praise with a doxology—doxology just means “word of glory” or “word of praise”—and the most traditional form of the doxology goes like this: “Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.” I am going to invite us to stand and say this psalm together again and to conclude with this doxology. So would you please stand…

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever, Amen.

How many of you have seen the movie The Sixth Sense that came out quite a few years ago now? It’s kind of a scary ghost movie, so I know it’s not for everyone. It has a bit of a surprise ending, which I am about to spoil, so if you have not seen it but expect to, you may plug your ears if you want. The movie stars Bruce Willis as a dead man who doesn’t know he’s dead. And it’s called “the sixth sense” because there’s a young boy who can see dead people, who can communicate with ghosts, and so he and the Bruce Willis character wind up developing an interesting relationship as Bruce Willis slowly realizes that he is in fact a ghost and as he comes to grips with the reality that he’s dead. The way I just described it, it sounds like it could be a comedy, but it’s supposed to be more of a suspenseful thriller.

And I imagine it’s right about now that you’re beginning to wonder why on earth I am preaching about ghost movies that most of you have never seen. And the truth is that it was just a cheesy way for me to introduce the whole idea of dead people coming to grips with the fact that they have died, which, you may have noticed, is St. Paul’s topic in our passage from Romans today.

St. Paul seems to think that we have all already died and have all already been granted the certain promise of resurrection. According to him, living out the rest of our lives is simply a matter of coming to grips with this fact of our own death. And here’s the key to how the whole thing works spiritually: We are united to Christ through our faith in him, and so we died with Jesus when he died on the cross, and we were raised to new life with him when he was resurrected. Paul uses the language of baptism: “We who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead, we too may live a new life. … For we know that our old self was crucified with him. … Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.” So, according to St. Paul, we have already “crossed over.” We have already died with Christ and through that experience we have already been brought over from death to eternal life.

Now that’s hard for most of us to take in, because it doesn’t seem to most of us like we have died. (At least I don’t remember dying, do you?!) So when St. Paul insists that we have died, that we have been buried with Christ, it’s easy to miss his point. Coming to grips with what St. Paul is saying here is, I imagine, a lot like a blind person suddenly being able to see for the first time. It would take a lot of adjustment. We naturally close our eyes because the light is so bright. It’s hard to adjust. Thinking of ourselves as people who have already died with Christ and who have already entered into new, eternal life—already—that’s pretty hard stuff to adjust to.

Most people think that eternal life begins when we die. Most of us expect to make a transition from this life to the next, at the time of our death. But what St. Paul is saying is that that transition from this life to the next has already happened through our union with Christ. For us Christians who have been buried with Christ and raised to new life with him, “this” life is the next life. We have already begun to live our eternal lives, the death of our bodies will simply be a doorway into another chapter of this same eternal Christian life—a life that begins now, here, at the moment when we are united to Christ by faith.

You know, a common criticism of Christians is that we are too otherworldly, too concerned with eternal life and not concerned enough with this life. It is assumed that religious beliefs about eternal life have nothing to do with the practical realities of the world we live in. We are too heavenly-minded to be of any earthly good, people say. And yet, what St. Paul says is the exact opposite. According to what Paul is saying in these verses, eternal life has everything to do with this life. The fact that we are right now already participating in eternal life through union with Christ in his death and resurrection—the fact that we have now already begun to live our eternal lives—this makes all the difference in the world when it comes to the way we live our lives in this world.

When an old life is buried and left behind, and a new life is begun, it changes everything. Just ask anyone who has ever been married. It may take a while to catch on, but the fact is, when you get married, your single life is over, dead and gone. And a new life has begun. And let me tell you, that has very practical consequences. The kind of death and new life that St. Paul is talking about, it works the same way. When we become united to Christ by placing our faith in him, our old sinful life is buried and left behind, and a new life is begun. Now, that doesn’t mean that you don’t miss your old life sometimes, that you aren’t sometimes stupidly tempted to go back. But there is no going back. We are in union with Christ, and, “The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So, in the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus,” Paul says. We Christians don’t try to avoid sin because we’re prudes or because we’re scared of God’s wrath or because we want to earn eternal life. We reject sin because we have already been given eternal life as a gift from Jesus. Our old corrupted selves were crucified with Jesus in order that we might be raised to new life, and we simply want to live up to what we have already attained. We want, as much as possible, to live our eternal lives beginning right now.

Brothers and sisters, we have already died with Christ. We are already living a new life in God. It may not always seem like it, your life may not always feel new or eternal, but we have already crossed over by being baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus. We have been united with him in his death, and we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. Let us therefore live the life in front of us as if it really were the beginning of the eternal life that God has given to us through his most beloved Son. Amen.

My wife Sarah is deathly afraid of plants, which to me is almost as funny as someone being afraid of bunnies or rainbows or something. But she really is scared of plants. Now, to be fair, she does have a cute little herb garden, and that doesn’t seem to terrify her too much. But any plants that really seem to have a life of their own, those are simply too much to keep around the house. So, like Venus fly traps, I’ve found that those do not make for the best anniversary gifts. Or if you’ve seen those vines that like to climb up the sides of houses and into air ducts, those are probably best not mentioned in Sarah’s presence. I think she believes that they’re like snakes and they might wrap around her and consume her if she isn’t careful. Plants have a life of their own, and I suppose there’s (maybe) something a little scary about that….

That said, I’m sure Sarah is none too pleased with Jesus’ words today. I can’t imagine she likes hearing Jesus say that he is the vine and we are the branches. That’s way too much plant-talk for her comfort. But there it is. He is the true vine. … What does that mean?

One of the reasons why I think Jesus speaks in images and metaphors like this is because they are so rich in meaning. “A picture is worth a thousand words,” we say, right? And this picture of Jesus as the vine and us as the branches, it says a lot. It says a lot about who Jesus is. It says a lot about the nature of our relationship with God, about what it means for us to share life with God.

Now, most of us think we have some idea of what it would mean to share life with God. We imagine ourselves opening up our lives to God. Maybe we imagine sharing more of our everyday lives with God, spending more of our time in prayer or more of our energy on things that we associate with God. When we talk about sharing more of our life with God, what we typically mean is making God a higher priority in our lives. We think sharing life with God means inviting God to be part of our lives. … But I don’t think this is what Jesus has in mind…

All you parents know that in early childhood development, there’s this critical stage in which children begin to understand that there are personal subjects in the world other than themselves. As we mature we begin to realize that the world is bigger than what we personally experience. We begin to understand that there are other people in the world who have lives of their own. If we mature in a somewhat healthy way, we begin to learn that Mom and Dad have lives of their own and do not exist solely for our interests. That’s a major turning point, because as all your parents know very well, babies do not know that there are other people in the world who have lives of their own.

Many people have come to believe that God is irrelevant to their everyday lives. But what if God has a life of his own? And what if ignoring God means that we are the ones who become irrelevant? What if sharing life with God does not mean inviting God to be part of our lives? What if sharing life with God means God inviting us to be part of his life? What if he is the vine, and we are the branches?

In the picture that Jesus paints, he is the kind of vine that Sarah hates, a vine that has a life of its own, and we are invited to share in that life as branches. We are meant to be connected to Jesus as the only real source of life in this world. There are plenty of people out there just existing, not truly living, and that’s because true life can only come from God himself.

Most of us want to do something with our lives that really matters in the end. And this is exactly what Jesus offers us with all this talk about producing “fruit.” When share life with God, when we remain branches in the vine, then we find ourselves in partnership with God, doing things that really matter. Rather than us asking God to help us with all the irrelevant things that we tend to fill our lives with, instead God asks us to help him with the most significant work in the world. God invites us to help him love people, to begin to reconcile some of the brokenness of our world. Jesus invites us to help him connect with people so that they too can share true life with him.

Let me close with this: Brothers and sisters, Jesus says that we are clean because of the word that he has spoken to us. And that word is the cross. Jesus’ death on the cross makes us completely clean, and so we get to be part of the vine of God’s life simply because God loves us, simply because Jesus willingly gave up his life for us. Jesus is a vine with a life of his own, and he may just wrap himself around us and his life might just consume ours, but he is not a vine to be afraid of; he is a vine that always produces very good fruit. Amen.

Today we join Jesus for one of his intriguing “figures of speech.” If you’ve ever noticed, Jesus has a habit of teaching about one thing by talking about something else, which is what English majors call a “metaphor.” Specifically, Jesus often talks about himself by talking about something else. Like when he says, “I am the vine and you are the branches,” or “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” He’s talking about vines and branches and bread, but really he’s telling us something about himself. And today we tune into Jesus talking about thieves and robbers and shepherds and sheep.

First let’s set the stage a bit. What kind of world do Jesus’ sheep live in? Apparently not a very safe one! There are thieves and robbers running around everywhere trying to jump over the fence and steal the sheep away! I picture like one of the Old West movies where late at night some menacing gang invades a ranch and quietly jumps the fence and opens it from inside and steals away with all the cattle, except in Jesus’ story it’s a flock of sheep.

When I was in junior high, I came a across a huge white dog laying on the sidewalk down the street from where I lived, and I concluded that this dog must now be mine since no one else was watching him. So I promptly named him “Bear”—because I thought he looked like a polar bear—and I went home and got a leash and came back and dragged Bear home with me. My parents eventually made me go door to door until we found his owners. But I’m telling you, the world is full of thieves and robbers, especially when it comes to other people’s animals.

Jesus of course is talking about one thing, but really he’s teaching us about something else. The image of the people of God as a flock of sheep is something that shows up over and over again throughout the Old Testament. The world has always been full of thieves and robbers that would gladly steal God’s sheep away from him. And for most of us, it wouldn’t be hard at all to come up with a list of things that we know try to steal us away, things that promise to bring us out to green pastures but in fact only wind up stealing and killing and destroying us from the inside out.

The hectic pace of our world is enough. The sheer machinery of what most of us experience in our everyday lives is enough to sneak in and steal us away. I can’t tell you the number of people who say to me that they really want life to slow down and schedules to ease up and there to be more space to share with God, but it all seems so out of our control. We’ve been stolen away.

In the midst of all this, many people are also stolen away by a haunting sense of guilt or shame in the presence of God. It’s ironic really. People wind up keeping their distance from God because they’re ashamed of feeling distant from God! People feel guilty for not connecting with God and so they rob themselves of a deep connection by staying away. It’s like when we have fallen out of touch with an old friend and don’t want to reconnect because we’re ashamed that we fell out of touch, and we think it would be embarrassing or awkward to make contact. That’s a terrible reason to lose a friend! God wants nothing more than to connect with you. And any guilt or shame that keeps you from God is a thief and a robber.

In Jesus’ day, there were plenty of spiritual gurus around who seemed like good shepherds to a lot of people, but who were in fact thieves. Immediately before the passage that we’re looking at, Jesus was having a bit of an altercation with some Pharisees who had set themselves up as shepherds, but who were actually stealing people away from God. And of course it’s not so different today. There are plenty of spiritual guides to choose from, and for that matter, many people choose simply to be their own spiritual guides. And yet at the end of the day, Jesus says, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen through the gate is a thief and a robber. There are a lot of well-intentioned thieves and robbers out there, and there are a lot of well-intentioned sheep being stolen from their rightful shepherd. The relentless machinery of modern life, our own shame and guilt, poor spiritual guidance: thieves and robbers come in a thousand forms.

Deep down, we often know when we’ve been stolen away by thieves and robbers. And the reason we know is because we can tell the difference between the voice of our true shepherd who loves us and the voices of those thieves who want only to destroy. As sheep, we have a proper shepherd, and we know that. Our hearts know it. And Jesus says as much: “The shepherd goes ahead of his sheep and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger … because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.” Spiritually do we not long for a shepherd to lead us out to fresh pastures where we can be at peace and be nourished and refreshed? We know there is such a shepherd. There has to be.

Now, if you’re following Jesus’ metaphor, you know what comes next, right? Jesus has presented us with the image of a sheep pen and a flock of sheep threatened by thieves who would break in and steal. Then he speaks of a shepherd that truly cares for his sheep, who calls his sheep by name, and whose sheep know his voice… If you’ve been following the metaphor, what comes next? After all this talk about a good shepherd, what is Jesus’ next line? “I am the good shepherd,” right?

Except, that’s not what he says! Jesus doesn’t say boring, predictable things. He says crazy things to make us think! He says, “I am the gate for the sheep” when he’s supposed to say “I am the good shepherd,” which is what English majors call a “mixed metaphor.” It’s like Jesus said “a rolling stone is worth two in the bush.” … Jesus is the gate for the sheep. What does that mean?!

“I am the gate,” he says, “Whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” In essence, anything that matters, we can only get by going through Jesus. That’s what it means for him to be the gate. He is our connection to God, and God is the source of all good things. Connecting with God through Jesus is the key to everything. If you want to be a better person, it’s very unlikely that you’ll achieve that simply by trying to be a better person. But if you plug into the life of God himself and experience his unconditional love shown to you in Jesus Christ, then you might just find that love transforming you into a better person. If you want true peace, if you want absolute forgiveness and acceptance, the only way to find that is by going through the gate. Jesus is the only way into the life of God, and there is no greener, more nourishing pasture than that!

Of course, in the verses following our reading, after throwing us for a loop, Jesus does go on to say that he is the good shepherd. And the key here is that he is the good shepherd because he lays down his life for his sheep. The reason why Jesus can be our gate into the life of God is because he laid down his life as an atoning sacrifice for us. The reason why we can connect with God through Jesus without any guilt or shame is because on the cross Jesus took on all our guilt and triumphed over it in his resurrection. In the midst of a world filled with things promising to lead to green pastures, but in the end only leading to death, Jesus offers himself as the always open gateway into God’s abundant life. Come to him and find the pasture you’ve been longing for. Amen.