Living Witness

The Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

February 15-16, 2020

1 Corinthians 3:7

 “Being SJLC 2020: Living Witness”

It’s only mid-February, but the spring garden seed catalogues have been coming for some time now. For plant lovers, it’s kind of like when all the holiday gift catalogues flood our mailboxes. I love to look through these and daydream about all the beautiful flowers and vegetable plants I could grow. Emphasis on the “daydream” here because although my wife and I do very much enjoy gardening, somehow our plants never seem to look quite as good as the ones in the catalogues. But we press on and have a good time with it. An important truth in gardening is that we can plant those seeds, providing as good an environment as we can to help them do well, but when all is said and done, we cannot make them grow. We can water, weed, and fertilize them, but it’s beyond our power to make them grow. That power belongs to the Lord God alone. This same principle holds true with the seed of faith that is planted in us beginning in Holy Baptism. We can see that this seed of faith is planted. We can provide the best environment that we can to help that seed flourish, but at the end of the day, it is the Lord God alone who can cause that faith to grow. This is what Paul the apostle is talking about in today’s Epistle lesson when he writes: “So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:7). This passage from Scripture serves as the basis for today’s message, entitled “Living Witness.” May the Lord’s rich and abundant blessing rest upon the preaching, the hearing, and the living of his Word for Jesus’ sake.

Our 4-week Epiphany series of Serving Jesus – Living in Community 2020 wraps up this weekend. We’ve been reviewing the principles of Joining Jesus on His Mission, from our friend Greg Finke. Today, we focus on two mission practices: talking with others and ministering through prayer. The questions that go with these mission practices are: What kinds of conversations are you having with people who don’t know Jesus? and How can we help you in prayer? Both of these are examples of what it means to be living as Jesus’ witness in daily life. How we live is going to be just as important – maybe even more important – as what we say. Actions speak louder than words. The Lord Jesus who loves us and laid down his life for us, who has given us a new birth through water and the Word, now calls us to be his living witnesses in the world. He calls us to show by what we do, not just by what we say, that Jesus is Lord of our lives.

As God’s people of old stood on the brink of entering the Promised Land, Moses reiterated for them all that the Lord God had done for them in bringing them out of slavery in Egypt, how He had sustained them during their forty years of wandering in the wilderness, and how they were to live as God’s chosen people. That’s what the book of Deuteronomy means: the second giving of the Law. Even though Moses himself did not enter the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 32:48-52), he faithfully prepared God’s people to enter it. And now, shortly before his death, Moses called upon the people to make a decision: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them” (Deuteronomy 30:19-20). The truth is that God’s people often chose death and curse, not life and blessing. They did not hold fast to the Lord; they did not obey his voice. And neither do we. We are as guilty as they were. But God, who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, sent One greater than Moses who would deliver us, not from slavery in Egypt, but slavery to sin and self; slavery to death and destruction. God sent his own Son to be the new Moses, who in his Sermon on the Mount, part of which we have in today’s Gospel lesson (Matthew 5:21-37), “went up on the mountain” (Matthew 5:1) to teach. As we heard in last week’s Gospel lesson (Matthew 5:13-17), Jesus did not come to abolish the Law of Moses, but to fulfill it. Rather than relaxing the demands of the Law, Jesus expands them: “You have heard that it was said… but I say to you…” (Matthew 5:21-22, 27-28, 31-32, 33-34). As the Son of God, Jesus is his own authority on the Word of God, therefore he is able to say: “But I say to you.” The Law of Moses points toward the One who would fulfill that Law, and that is Jesus himself. On our own and despite our best intentions, we will always come up short in trying to live out the requirements and demands of the Law, some of which we heard in the Gospel lesson for today. We know all too well that anger, lust, sexual immorality, swearing an oath – these things are not “out there” somewhere. They reside within our own hearts. This is why we confess our sins together before we come to the Lord’s Supper: because of our need; because we are indeed “sinful and unclean” and because we have indeed “sinned in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we left undone.” That is the reality of our life. When all is said and done, our hope is not in ourselves and our own efforts to set things right. Our hope is in Jesus alone, who lived that life of perfect obedience to the Father’s will and who fulfilled all the demands of the Law. Our hope is in Jesus who bore the penalty for our sins of anger, lust, sexual immorality, swearing, and everything else that separates us from God and from one another. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). This is the good news that sets us free.

This is the good news that we bring to the world. We plant Gospel seeds about Jesus through our words and actions each day as we go about our callings in life at home, work, school, wherever we may be. And so we are Jesus’ living witnesses. What I know is this: nobody is ever argued or shouted or shamed into the kingdom of heaven. Rather, our living witness to Jesus’ love becomes noticeable to the people around us. They know we’re not perfect, of course, but they begin to see the light and love of Jesus at work in us, and that becomes an attractive thing to them. As we get to know people in the neighborhood, the coffee shop, the gym, the workplace, we get to know them and what’s going on in their lives. We find out what their needs are, their hopes and fears, and what we can do to help. We discover how we can be Christ to our neighbor; the hands and feet and mouth of Jesus to help wherever help is needed. This comes about through conversations – not an isolated, one-time conversation, but lots of conversations over an extended period. We establish relationships with people. We care about them not as a project, but as people. We do as the apostle Peter tells us: “But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15). If ever gentleness and respect were needed in our world, it is now.

Katherine Hankey (1834-1911) is someone you may have never heard of before. She was the daughter of a wealthy English banker and raised in the Anglican Church. She was an active Christian woman who organized Sunday School classes for rich and poor in London, all of which had a strong influence in the city with large numbers of young students themselves becoming zealous Christian workers. When she was thirty years old, Katherine Hankey experienced a serious illness, and during a long period of recovery she wrote a lengthy poem on the life of Christ. The poem consisted of two main sections, each with 50 verses. The first section was called, “The Story Wanted.” The second section of the poem was written later that same year (1864) and was called, “The Story Told.” It is this second poem that became the basis for the hymn we are about to sing: “I love to tell the story of unseen things above, of Jesus and His glory, of Jesus and His love. I love to tell the story because I know ‘tis true. It satisfies my longings as nothing else can do” (Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions, by Kenneth W. Osbeck. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1990; p. 299). And that’s exactly what we’re called to do as Jesus’ living witnesses: tell the story. Through our words and deeds, tells that old, old story of Jesus and his love. May God help us to do this day by day as we join Jesus on his mission. Amen.