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Sin is not so much about breaking God’s law as it is about breaking God’s heart. Let me illustrate. In my life, I’ve smoked a total of about 3 cigarettes and I smoked them all in the same summer. I was sixteen and working at a church camp. It just so happened that several of the other staff members at camp were smokers and late at night, as we came back from our counselor devotions, they would stop for a few moments and light up. I, wanting to be in the “cool” crowd would stop with them and eventually, they offered me a smoke. They were all college students and I was still in high school so I didn’t want to be so cool as to turn down their invitation. Three different nights I stayed out there with them and did my best to cough down a cigarette. I also happened to keep a journal that summer – every night I wrote about the events of the day, including my experience with smokers. The next weekend, I went home and was lounging around playing a video game when my mom came downstairs with tears in her eyes. Uh-oh, she had my journal in her hands. I paused the video game and remembered that I had left my journal on the kitchen counter, begging to read. She said she had just picked it up and had glanced through it when she read about my smoking exploits. She didn’t make it 5 words into her speech before she started crying. My heart sunk. I could tell that she was really disappointed in me and that, although I didn’t think 3 cigarettes was that big of a deal – it obviously was to her. I had broken the rules – yes, but the bigger deal was that I had broken her heart. Sure, I’d seen my mom cry before, but never because of something that I had done. I felt horrible and never again have I ever picked up a cigarette. God gave us the law for a reason. He gave it to us as instructions for our life, for our benefit and he always wants us to do the right thing. So when we sin, when we are disobedient to God or fail to do God’s will, we’re not so much breaking God’s law as we are breaking God’s heart. Keep this in mind as I talk about today’s gospel reading, which on one level, is very difficult for us Lutherans to hear. You see, we as Lutherans would much rather gravitate toward our reading from Romans today, especially that first part. Paul writes, “I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.” He continues, “For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are not justified (or saved) by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” This is without a doubt one of the most wonderful passages in the entire Bible and Luther said this after reading it. “I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on new meaning. This passage of Paul became to me a gateway to heaven.” This stuff in Romans is where we get that whole of idea of salvation by grace through faith. There is nothing that we can do to earn God’s love or favor. We have all sinned and all fall short. Yet God, in his great mercy, comes to us anyway, loves us anyway, forgives us anyway, and sends us Jesus to die on a cross to prove to us how serious he is about this. We don’t hold the power of salvation inside of us, only God does. Yet, as a gift, God makes that power of salvation available to each and every one of us – as a free gift, no strings attached. This is what we Lutherans crave and what we cling to above all else. God loves us and forgives us and we don’t have to do anything to earn that love or forgiveness. Because of Jesus Christ, we will all experience salvation. What great news! What a great message! Its no wonder that Paul is known as one of the best evangelists ever, and Luther’s rediscovery of his message changed the world. The problem is that we Lutherans often get stuck in this place. We dance around claiming saved by grace through faith and we never take the next step. We somehow miss the natural response to that grace, which is holy living. Or if you want to use fancy church words. We’re great at explaining justification, but we’re not so hot at sanctification – holy living. We are so worried that people will get mixed up and think that you have to do good deeds to get into heaven that we just don’t mention good deeds at all. Unfortunately for us, Jesus does take that next step and does call us to holy living. Jesus in our gospel lesson for today calls us to be more than believers of the word, he calls us to be doers of the word. Jesus is pretty clear. He says that, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” As a Lutheran pastor its really hard for me to say this, but on the authority of Jesus, we can say that just knowing the right words is not enough. We are called to be doers of the word. Moses reiterates this point in Deuteronomy, “I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: a blessing if you do the commandments of the Lord, and a curse if you do not obey the commandments.” Its important to notice that the blessing is never defined and neither is the curse. The blessing is simply the doing of God’s will. There is no external or additional reward. When you do to the right thing, you are blessed. And the curse works the same way only opposite. The curse is simply not doing the will of God. There is not additional curses if you fail to do it God’s way – like getting cancer or going to hell. The blessings and curses are intrinsic to the doing, which is why Jesus wants us to be doers of the word. He loves us and wants us to be blessed. We are his children. Now, this doesn’t mean that its always going to be easy. Doing the word of God is often harder that not doing the word of God. Think about the two men in the song that I taught to the children. I’m not a construction person, but I would imagine it’s a heck of a lot harder to build on solid rock than to build on sand, at least for small house. Doing things the right way, on the foundation of God, is often more difficult and you may not see any rewards for a long time. The man who built his house on the rock had the exact same house as the house on the sand. That was, until the storms came. Having that solid foundation, being grounded in the scriptures and in discipleship, being doers of the word, is how we prepare for the storms in our lives, both on an individual basis, but also on a congregational basis. How can we as individuals and as a congregation become better prepared for those storms that lie ahead? We can immerse ourselves in Scripture by studying the Bible and sharing our insights with each other. We can become a praying congregation – praying more often for each other and with each other. We can become more active in social ministries like OASIS that serve the needs of our community. We can continue to worship together – this is especially true during the summer months when church attendance drops considerably. And we can continue to give freely of our time, our talents, and our financial resources. These are the things that Jesus talks about when he says that we are called to be doers of the word. These are the ways that not only do we get to know God better, but they are also the ways that God gets to know who we are better. These are the ways that we respond to the grace of God – not so that we will get more rewards or avoid more punishments, but so that we can show God how much it is that we love him. I’m so proud of my dog, Bear. He graduated from doggie obedience school last week. One of the things I learned at those classes is that you can get a dog to do just about anything if you give them the right motivation – the right kind of treat as a reward or finding the one thing that they hate more than anything and use that as a punishment. Rewards and punishments really do modify behavior. But that isn’t what God wants. God wants us to be more like trees than like dogs. Why does a tree bear fruit? Because it is part of its nature. There is something inside of it that causes it to bear good fruit. A farmer can offer it all the rewards or punishments in the world, but that won’t impact what kind of fruit it will bear. The only thing a farmer can do is modify the environment, cultivate the ground, fertilize it, care for it, and even then, they have to hope that the tree will do what it is supposed to. That’s what God does for us. He surrounds us with all the grace, love, and forgiveness that we need to be healthy and to bear fruit. He cultivates our environment and gives us a church in which to grow. He provides us with all that we need to be doers of the word. And God’s hope is that we will naturally bring forth the good fruit. He doesn’t want to just modify our behavior – that is just a temporary fix. He wants our good works to come forth naturally and sincerely. And through the Holy Spirit, which is like the sap bringing us all the good things of God, he generously gives us all that we need to do that. God gives us the power of salvation.
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