Accountability

We may remember, or perhaps we were, the college student called into the chaplain's office after weekend shenanigans to hear the chaplain ask “What on earth were you thinking when you did that?”

“How long have you been a chaplain here?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Well you should by this time have enough experience to know that I wasn't thinking. I was drinking.”

No thought, No regard for others.

Forget about “honoring father and mother and others in authority”

That is so...limiting.

And we don't outgrow this stage when we finally get out of school.

Many of us here today have taken upon ourselves the pesky burden of the Rule of the Society.

We've all nodded solemnly that it teaches us good things, which are to be helpful for life and ministry.

And immediately we turn into good Pharisee lawyers.

What exactly does “keeping the rule” entail?

Would singing Morning Prayer 4 mornings a week rather than 5 be sufficient?

How about speaking the office instead of singing; will that count?

It is the same problem as in the introduction to the Good Samaritan parable: “...and seeking to justify himself he asked Jesus.... [Lk 10:29]

What is the bare minimum that I need to be doing in order to be following the law?

Yes, that's us, ready with sharp pencils to work that out.

It would be a sad and desperate situation if the Father entered into that kind of calculation with us, wouldn't it?

“What is the minimum I have to do in order to love these bone-headed people?”

Fortunately, the Lord does not frame the question that way.

Indeed, the nature of his love is so different, that it does not permit itself that kind of scheming.

In spite of all the provocations we pose to the Lord.

In spite of all of our un-loveliness.

Our un-accountability is met with something far different than we earn or deserve.

Let's call it “grace.”

In recent Sundays we have been hearing Gospel lessons about judgment:

--foolish virgins shut out

--hesitant investors dismissed

--sheep surprisingly separated from goats

And today, as on a Sunday back in October,

--greedy tenants thrown out

At first glance, we say that they all get what they deserve; good riddance.

But it soon comes to us that the “they” is “us!, and all of a sudden the stories are uncomfortable indeed.

“Accountability” becomes the question put to us.

But it is different from the accountability about which one talks in school or business.

It is an accountability at which everyone fails.

For it can and does happen that we begin to treat the Gospel as a possession rather than a trust, a tenancy.

But the Gospel is something that we are continually receiving, and not possessing.

We are all recipients of a faith we did not think up ourselves.

Jesus is the fulfillment of the promises of God to Israel, promises that come to us only by our being adopted into God's family.

But we want to control it, use it, or ignore it, in whatever ways we determine ourselves.

This Gospel, this body of Christ, this church is not ours.

In today's lesson, Jesus asks, “Now what will the owner do to those tenants when he returns?”

And the question is before us.

It is being answered in the Divine Service in which we are engaged.

What does God do with our misunderstanding, sloth, willfulness, and sin?

Forgiveness, O blessed forgiveness!

He reconciles us to himself, the very thing that we cannot do ourselves.

By his own grace, we are in the hands of a persistently loving and re-creating God, who has vowed not to leave us to our own devices.

All these stories about judgment are not so much about what will happen as they are about what could happen if there were no cross and resurrection, if God were only a score-keeper instead of a game-changer.

O Lord, change me in all the ways that you know best.

Old Adam is a mighty good swimmer said Luther.

Therefore, every morning I must wake up and receive afresh the grace of God that I began to receive in my Baptism.

Every morning I must wake up and say to God,'Continue putting the old me to death so that the new me might arise.'

Oh, what a treasure, what a gift this is!

In reflecting on the burden of the pastoral office, Gregory the Great (ca.540-604) prayed:

I direct others to the shore of perfection while I am still tossing on the waves of transgression.

But I beg you, in this shipwreck of my life, hold me up with the plank of your prayers, so that while my own heaviness makes me sink, the hands of your great goodness may lift me up.

And so we sing today:

Sin's dreadful doom upon us lies;

Grim death looms fierce before our eyes.

O Sun, arise; without your light

We grope in gloom and dark of night.

O Savior, rend the heavens wide;

Come down, come down with mighty stride. [LBW38]

And to those Advent prayers, may all say Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.