Justification, Lent 2

Justification

Lent 2: Genesis 17.1-7, 15,16; Romans 4.13–25; Mark 8.31-38,

“Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” Rom 5.1 (The words of the pax, the peace today.)

Occasionally, when I used to teach maths, I would give the class a test and tell them that I would give everybody the same mark as the one who scored highest. Invariably Stephen (who went on to be a Wrangler at Cambridge) got everything right, and the whole class were duly awarded 10 out of 10.

It was fascinating to see different pupil’s approaches to this kind of test.

There were those who generally never bothered much, who would sit and write me amusing messages on the test paper – at least the messages were what 14 year-olds think is amusing. I still remember: “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam, he wants you for a lampshade.”

There were those who tried very hard and who were disappointed that their own efforts were being overlooked, albeit that they were going to be given top marks anyway.

Some even complained to their housemaster that this whole business was ‘not fair’.

Then a few suspected that there was a trick in this, and that they would somehow get punished if they didn’t make a good stab at it.

Quite a few were hopeless at maths, but tried their hardest anyway because they knew that was what they were supposed to do. They were the ones who were tickled pink that they had been awarded ten out of ten – a first for them!

And others, like Stephen, loved maths and did the test for the sheer joy of it.

Of course, most of the boys never realised that in a busy week, this technique excused me from the chore of ‘marking’. I only had to mark Stephen’s paper.

The staggering doctrine of ‘justification by faith’, which Paul underlines in today’s epistle, has caused similar reactions amongst both the faithful and the faithless.

We looked at justification from a different perspective a few moths ago. Perhaps you remember the simple Sunday School definition: “Justified means God looks on me just-as-if-I’d never sinned. Justified.”

This was the cornerstone of Reformation theology. “This one and firm rock”, said Martin Luther, “ which we call the doctrine of justification is the chief article of the whole Christian doctrine, which comprehends the understanding of all godliness.” (Commentary on Galatians.)

So it is hardly surprising that it’s in the 39 Articles of Religion published in the Book of Common Prayer as the reformation foundations of the Church of England. Article 11 puts it this way:

We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works or deservings: Wherefore, that we are justified by Faith is a most wholesome Doctrine, and very full of comfort, as more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification.

In today’s epistle, Paul sums it up, and indeed the whole Gospel, in the closing verses:

Righteousness... will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.”(Rom 4.24f)

How do people react today then to this teaching of the church; to what has sometimes been called ‘the outrage of grace’?

Many want to fall back into what Paul describes as ‘the slavery of law’, good works, which at least give us the security of self-satisfaction. John Stott reminds us that this is not the Christian way of believing: “Faith’s exclusive function is humbly to receive what grace offers.” (BST: 131)

Paul gives the example of the revered patriarch, Abraham. He was saved by simple faith, not by obeying the law. And this was ‘reckoned to him for righteousness’.

In other words, he wasn’t righteous – you only have to read Genesis to see that – but he believed in God; and so he was justified: righteousness was reckoned to him.

As with those boys in the maths class, there is something very unsettling about this doctrine. So we make some pathetic stab at our maths questions, or at living a Christian life, and God awards us top marks?!

Well it’s supposed to be unsettling, and of course, it’s not quite like that.

The Gospel passage today is a great endorsement of the full humanity of Christ. Even given Peter’s impetuous nature, for Peter to feel able to rebuke Jesus, to correct his game plan, to speak to the boss on behalf of the lads, the shop steward – presumably this is why Jesus turns to look at all the disciples when he rebukes Peter (33) - this shows that the disciples treated Jesus as a fallible man like themselves. They could not yet conceive the inconceivable.

In his inspired assertion that Jesus was the Christ (29), Peter had only grasped a half-truth. He had not understood that this Christ was also to be the suffering servant. He was utterly righteous in himself, in no need of justification, and yet he would suffer and die.

And this is the downside, if you like, of the doctrine of justification. Although we may be justified by faith, pursuing that faith, following and loving Jesus, is unlikely to be a bed of roses. Indeed Jesus likens it to ‘taking up our cross’.

Let’s go back to school days again. If you were like me at school, the best work you produced was often for teachers that you liked; whom you wanted to please.

Indeed, I can still remember how much I disappointed my maths master when I forgot to turn over an exam paper and consequently only answered half the questions.

Our obedience to God, our ‘wanting to please’, stems from a realisation of how much he has done for us. When we come to worship, we do not go away and want to lead better lives for fear of punishment – we are justified by faith in Christ. ‘There is now no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus’.

No, we want to lead better lives because we love God and know the comfort and assurance of being accepted and loved by him.

This was the experience of the godly priest-poet George Herbert, who we remembered in the church calendar last week. He felt all unworthy to come to the altar, to the Table of the Lord, and had to be reminded of the Love of Christ, Love himself, who had born the blame and justified him through faith, and who welcomed him at the Table.

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.

A guest, I answer'd, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?

Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not," says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat.
So I did sit and eat.

The Wedding Banquet - Justification

The Wedding Banquet. Matthew 22.1-14

“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord… for he has clothed me in the garments of salvation.” Isaiah 61.10

As a young working class lad, I remember being very nervous in my first few terms at Cambridge, every time an invitation appeared in my pigeonhole to some dinner or lunch or blessing of the university beehives... What was I to wear?

Sometimes the invitation would bear the enigmatic phrase: “Doctors will wear Scarlet.” But I wasn’t a doctor. That didn’t help.

Gradually I learnt the dress codes and visited the charity shops where I picked up tail coats and dinner jackets and patent leather shoes – all of which I still have in my wardrobe. They have survived the last 40 years considerably better than my body has.

Many of us have dreams about being inappropriately dressed on posh occasions. Or worse still, there is the nightmare that we are completely naked. Of course Mr Freud had plenty to say about that.

And this surprisingly common feature of human dreams around the world, is what gives something of an edge to today’s parable of Jesus – and to the plight of the poor man being bound in the picture by Merian the Elder which adorns the front of our service sheet.

This parable, sometimes called the Great Banquet or the Wedding Feast, has a twist at the end which is not in Luke’s version of the same parable. (Lk 14.16-24)

Let’s do a little Bible study on the Gospel this morning.

The context of the story is Jesus’ teaching that many of the Jewish leaders had rejected the message of the Gospel that he was proclaiming. “He came unto his own and his own received him not” as John put it. (John 1.11)

Matthew also used a perfectly legitimate Jewish teaching method of interpretation – called pesher – which embellished the original parable in the light of what had happened since Jesus delivered it.

So the slaves being beaten and killed is a description of what happened to many in the Christian church in the four decades after Christ – especially the early missionaries.

Matthew adds too that the King was furious and sent troops to destroy the City. Certainly Christians after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70AD could not see this as anything other than God’s judgment on a nation that had rejected the Messiah.

So Jesus came to the Jews and they did not want him, and the Gospel was then thrown open to the whole world. The servants were to bring in good and bad, Matthew tells us – everyone was welcome to the Banquet in honour of the King’s Son.

But what about this man without a wedding robe?

The king immediately spots him: ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.’ (Matt 22.12-14)

Now that’s worse treatment than you get if you turn up at the Athenaeum wearing trainers!

But why does Matthew add these curious verses?

Well think for a moment about how the other guests managed to get wedding robes. They were dragged in off the streets.

I can remember my embarrassment at turning up to a friend’s club for dinner, one summer evening, without jacket or tie. It was like the scary dream.

But very politely I was ushered into some cubby-hole where there was a selection of ill-fitting jackets and hideous ties – they certainly didn’t want to encourage you to do it again! But they clothed you in an acceptable way for dinner, even if you felt the style police were about to arrest you at every mouthful.

The simple part of this parable, in both Luke’s and Matthew’s version, is that we are invited to the Gospel party and should accept the invitation.

The more complex part, has to be teased out, and contains a doctrine explained most fully in the subsequent writings of St Paul – the doctrine of justification.

The King in the parable is hugely generous.

He provides his Son - whose wedding feast it is.

He provides the food and the wine.

But what Matthew adds in his version, is that the King provides also the fine wedding robes.

“In this way, nobody need be ashamed of their rags, and nobody can be proud of their party frocks; there is room neither for embarrassment nor for pride in the feast of the kingdom – at this Table. Both attitudes ruin the enjoyment.” (pace Michael Green)

In the words of one of Charles Wesley’s great hymns: “Clothed in righteousness divine, bold I approach the eternal throne.”

Or as our text from the prophet Isaiah has it: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord… for he has clothed me in the garments of salvation.”

The biblical doctrine of Justification is simply this: that when we feel all unworthy of stepping into the presence of God; when we feel, again in the words of the prophet Isaiah, that “all our righteousness is as filthy rags” (Isaiah 64.6); when we feel stripped and naked before the loving gaze of the Judge of all the earth – then God clothes us in the righteousness of Christ; he looks on us with unreserved acceptance, because we are in Christ; in the Beloved Son in whose honour the wedding banquet is spread.

The offending guest was offered wedding robes like all the rest. But he chose to wear his own robes – he was good enough for God and didn’t need any charity from the King; any grace and forgiveness from God. He was arrogant and proud in his heart.

So this parable is not a threat or a warning, that if we don’t make the grade we will get bound and cast into hell.

Rather it is a loving invitation, that whether good or bad, as long as we come pleading only the merits of Christ our Saviour, clothed in his righteousness, then we are welcome to enjoy the banquet.

Never believe the self-deception that you are unworthy to receive the bread and the wine. Of course you are unworthy. We all are!

As I shall say in a few minutes as I invite you to receive the Bread and Wine of the kingdom: “Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Happy are those who are called to his supper.”

And we will all respond, priests and people: “ Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof, but speak the word only and my soul shall be healed.”

The Banquet and the wedding robes are gifts, to be received joyfully.

As the choir will sing as we eat and drink:

O sacred banquet, wherein Christ is received;
the memorial of his passion is renewed;
the soul is filled with grace;
and a pledge of future glory is given to us.
Alleluia!

[O sacrum convivium a 6
Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611)

O sacrum convivium, in quo Christus sumitur;
recolitur memoria passionis ejus;
mens impletur gratia;
et futurae gloriae nobis pignus datur.
Alleluia!

Words: Antiphon to the Magnificat, Second Vespers, Corpus Christi]