The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for June 15, 2008

Texts: Romans 5:1-8

Title: “You Bet Your Life”

              It is said that there are but two things certain in life.  Help me out here.  [death and taxes] To that list each of us might, given some time, want to make our own addition(s).  Think with me here.  What is “certain” in life?

              In the month leading up to Saturday a week ago a strong consensus formed around what many thought to be a certainty. Odds ran high, very high, that Big Brown, the uncontested winner of the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, would win the Belmont Stakes, the third race in horse racing’s Triple Crown, a feat not accomplished in the last thirty plus years. While I don’t pay attention to betting odds, it was reported that unprecedented amounts of money were bet on Big Brown to win, money put down at the betting window by many people having no better knowledge of horses and horseracing than you or me.

              So why were numbers of people who might otherwise never enter a betting parlor be willing to make the effort? The fact that Big Brown was mounting a serious, well publicized quest for the Triple Crown certainly had a lot to do with it, but it was the seeming inevitability, the certainty of a win, that converted the casual fan into a bettor.

              No one saw the disappointment coming.  The horse couldn’t miss.  All one had to do was look at the record.  Never beaten, outclassed the field in each of the races leading up to the Belmont Stakes, the third race that would earn the horse immortality.  All one had to do was look at the record.  Big Brown failed---so much for certainty. 

              Certainty---death and taxes, and once and a while a horse that can’t miss. Certainty. When I last talked to our financial advisor, this was some months ago, he showed me a graph depicting a very steady and predictable appreciation in all the stock funds in which I was invested. No, he would not guarantee that that steady performance would continue indefinitely, but based on the data he showed me why should I not believe that past performance would be a good predictor of the future? We all have been sobered in recent months to discover that the word “certainty” and the stock market are unlikely to be found in the same sentence any time soon.

              This week National Public Radio ran a series of stories on the housing market in Minneapolis.  The north side of Minneapolis, where I used to work incidentally, was for many years home to solidly middle class people, residents who maintained a strong identity with the neighborhoods in that part of the city.  The residents of those neighborhoods, like many of us, counted on their homes, their major asset, to continue to appreciate in value as they had done the last several years. 

               The mortgage lending crunch brought on by all those sub prime loans that couldn’t be serviced, has seen an epidemic of foreclosures.  Those foreclosures have in turn put pressure on homeowners in north Minneapolis who are paying their mortgages on time, or who own their homes outright, pressure to move out of their neighborhood before things get even worse. “Certainty” and rising home values are unlikely to be found in the same sentence any time soon in Minneapolis, or across the greater parts of this nation.

              What is certain these days?  Those things on the bad side of the ledger seem to be about the only things that qualify, things like rising prices at the pump, the ill effects of changes in the earth’s atmosphere, the continuing threat of terrorism and war, and the ever widening gulf between the world’s haves and have nots. Certainty.

              Death and taxes.  Make the argument that they alone might rightly be labeled certain, but to varying degrees things like an appreciating stock market, appreciating home values, this privileged land been to a great extent deemed certain over the past decades. Things have changed. The stress quotient is rising as many of us are coming to grips with the fact that uncertainty is gaining a greater and greater grip on our lives.

              Uncertainty forces us to pose serious questions about life and the future.  In the wake of tragedy, personal or national, I have heard many, many people express their failure to understand how people can cope absent a religious faith. Experience, however, teaches that people have some pretty refined coping strategies that have nothing to do with faith. The question I would ask us to consider is one that bears considering and reconsidering often, and that is, what, to put it crudely, gives us religious folk a leg up over the non-religious when faced with personal or national tragedy, or this growing list of uncertainties spawned as a result of rising gas prices, a stricken housing market, and an economy which many believe to be in recession?  Of what are we certain?

              As transformation has become a priority topic here at the church for the last several months increased emphasis has been given to the specifics of faith, what we believe and why. Are we prepared to identify the convictions, or bedrock beliefs, that support the faith claims we make? In a world that is imposing increasingly stern challenges to our way of life, and the personal goals to which we aspire, certainty about what we believe becomes more and more and issue.

              The topic is certainty.  I began by suggesting death and taxes are popularly thought of us certainties.  I also suggested that there was in the minds of many inevitability, certainty, attached to a certain racehorse joining the ranks of Triple Crown winners.  Like the racehorse that came up short, many of us have seen things we deemed certain outrun by events in life.  

              The topic is certainty. Among all the great personalities in the Bible you can name, you will not identify one who maintained so great a certainty about what he believed as the Apostle Paul.  His faith spawned writings that have inspired generations, but just as importantly, helped clarify the faith for Christians generation to generation.

              In an age where many Christians come to worship seeking little more than a bit of encouragement to get them through the week, a refreshing pause from life’s demands, Paul challenges us to go deeper, to see our lives and the realities we confront in the context of one overarching truth, or certainty, and that is that God reigns. And how do we apprehend that reality?  We accept that reality on faith.  While this statement is not to be found in the writings of Paul, but instead comes to us from Donald Hankey, Paul would have agreed with it one hundred percent.  “Faith [Hankey writes] is betting your life there is a God.”  [repeat]

              You bet your life, and God does the rest.  By betting our life, by exercising our faith in God, quote Paul, God confers peace. Now this is not peace awarded in return for the good deeds we have accomplished, this is peace not by merit, but by gift through the decisive enabling action of God. We have peace solely because of what Jesus, God’s son, did for us.  “God proves his love for us [Paul writes] because while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” 

              Christ proves his love through his personal sacrifice on our behalf. Now Paul wants us to be absolutely clear about what that sacrifice means. It means in this instance that [quote Paul] “while we were [and still are] weak” in sin, God through Christ justifies us, that is, “treats us as if we were righteous, even when in fact we are not.” Personal faith gives us the lens through which we perceive that reality.  You bet your life, and God does the rest.

              Professor William Barkley once famously said, “Our whole relationship with God is dependent on the faith that what Jesus said is true, and the faith that Jesus is the Son of God...”  So what is faith? it’s betting your life, but, this from another commentator, “faith is hope which has gone beyond hope and turned to certainty, even when the evidence and the facts seem all against it.”

              It is no small matter to bet our lives on anything. The story is told of a nun, Mother Maria, who upon witnessing a sobbing mother who refused to surrender her baby before being led to her death, took that mother’s place and was executed by the Nazis instead.

              She bet her life knowing that God would do the rest, her faith enabling her to make the extreme sacrifice. Faith like that is not rare across the pages of history.    

              We justifiably marvel at a faith of Mother Maria’s proportion, faith so strong as to be willing to sacrifice life itself to attain something of value that can’t even be seen or touched.  What can be said about a faith that trusts God even when the world seems utterly devoid of God?               

“Faith is hope which has gone beyond hope and turned to certainty, even when the evidence and the facts seem all against it.”  But what causes hope to turn into certainty?  Each one of us is likely to give a different answer based on our particular experience. Insofar as Jesus’ disciples were concerned it was the appearance of the resurrected Lord in their midst that turned hope into certainty.  For Paul it was the testimony of Jesus’ disciples and others who had known the Lord in the flesh, but it was also his personal sense of Jesus active in his life.

              Unfortunately there is no can’t fail recipe for turning the faith we bring to the Lord into certainty. What we have instead is a written record of God’s mighty acts in the midst of his people. The faith to which we aspire has history behind it, history in which God on numerous occasions chose to intervene by chastening his people for their disobedience, but also by entering into various partnerships, covenants with his people, through which he voluntarily bound himself to us. We have numerous examples of people like Mother Maria who by faith made extraordinary sacrifices or did extraordinary things in God’s name.  

              Paul is frank to address the rigors of the Christian life as he experienced it, “boasting” in the suffering he endured to enjoy the glory of God.  He boasted because, as he states it in our lesson, “suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.  And here is where certainty comes in, “hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.”

              We live amid great uncertainty these days, sobering to see assumptions we have held about life come unraveled. We can go to Barnes and Noble or any Christian bookstore and find shelve upon shelve of books and magazines that offer coping strategies. We may seek the advice of Oprah and Dr. Phil.  Advice abounds, but only faith brings us into the presence of the living God. Faith is betting your life there is a God. Friends, it is the only sure bet we will make in this life.     AMEN

PRAYER

              Almighty God, you hold a mirror before us to expose our failings, yet not so as to condemn us, but to rehabilitate us.  While original sin is a doctrine many reject as flawed, a notion concocted by primitive minds, there is no avoiding the reality of sin as it manifests itself in our daily experience. We acknowledge before you, O Lord, the sin for which we are guilty.  Knowing you to be merciful we confess, yes, to clear our consciences, but also to find strength to amend our ways of thinking and doing. 

                Progress, O Lord, is slow, the obstacles we face in overcoming destructive habits formidable. Brace us lest we give up and give in.  May your Spirit quicken our spirits to seek after righteousness in all that we do. It is the mind of Christ we would have; teach us, O God, to aspire to nothing less.

                    Justified, treated as if we are righteous, even when, in fact we are not. We marvel at your incomprehensible grace, O Lord, a grace that beckons us into relationship even when we repeatedly deny you.  We marvel at your grace that though we denied your Son, the Christ, and put him to death, he was raised from the dead as the mediator of salvation. Lord, you invite us to a banquet table that we might share the feast of the redeemed, bidding us to trust you and enjoy.  Our energies are depleted in our struggles with doubt, this you know full well, O Savior.  May we,   O Christ, like the twelve you called as disciples, learn to doubt our doubts that we may serve you more fully.

                 In these uncertain times many lack the ability to cope, O God.  Work hours are cut, jobs made vulnerable, as gas prices remain prohibitively high, even as rent or mortgage payments cause stress. Sustain those who in this hour feel they can no longer cope, the despairing who have been driven to their knees.  Be with children who struggle to understand the change that has come over their parents, who witnessing their vulnerability seek assurance that all is well.    

              Abide with those who are struggling to cope with floods or the threat of floods in the states to our north.  To those who have been victimized, O God, impart strength that they may cope. Grant wisdom and courage to those who are forced to deal with the fallout from floods, fires, and violent weather, even as we acknowledge the personal sacrifice so many have made to assist the neighbor in distress.

              Living God, we honor our fathers today with special gratitude.  Mentors and guides, they have been material providers, but more importantly they have been spiritual providers, their love for us modeling your love for us.  O Lord, continue to bless all men as they seek to faithfully meet the challenges of parenting. Encourage and guide those who are new to the challenges and responsibilities of parenthood.

              Abide with those whom tragedy has undone.  We pray that you will be with those whose hearts have been broken, who in this hour feel they cannot cope. O God, source of eternal hope, may your Spirit bring light to those who in negotiate the dark valley. May the suffering know, O Christ, that you who bore the suffering of the world to God, will bear their suffering in this time of despair.

              We pray this day for those who struggle to believe, who feel excluded from your household, O God.  Be merciful and attentive to their special needs, even as you enlarge their capacity to hear your summons.

              In the confidence that you are present, O God, to hear our prayers we lift up our personal concerns [pause] and we pray for…