THE EVANGELICAL EXODUS: From Virtue To Christ!

 

SERMON for the TRANSFIGURATION of our LORD

 

WTHE EVANGELICAL EXODUS: From Virtue To Christ!W

 

“Now about eight days after these sayings he took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And as he was praying, the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his raiment became dazzling white. And behold, two men talked with him, Moses and Eli′jah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, and when they wakened they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is well that we are here; let us make three booths, one for you and one for Moses and one for Eli′jah”—not knowing what he said. As he said this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silence and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen” (Lk. 9:28-36).

 

 

Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Father in heaven, we pray that you would impart to us a word of life this morning, so that we might be made partakers of the one who for us was crucified and raised, your dear Son, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.  

Dearly Beloved: Grace to you and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

 

N

icolaus von Amsdorf, one of the great preachers and teachers of the reformation, was asked on his deathbed whether he trusted in any of his good works to save him, to which he boldly confessed: “I thank God that I have never done a good work!”

            It may be too tempting for us to reduce these words of the dying Amsdorf to mere overstatement. They appear to be too free, too unbound from the law, to be taken seriously. The old being gets nervous—and understandably so. After all, taken at face value, they seem to undermine and strike at the root of everything this old world holds to be “good, right, and beautiful.” Read as written, they seem to imply not only that good works are useless for gaining salvation, but that they are even obstacles to obtaining it!

            “How could Amsdorf be so irresponsible?” the old being squawks, indignantly. “Just think of what would happen to the moral fabric of society if such a word got loose; a word that presumes to whisk the law away in its entirety and set in its place a radical freedom, with no strings or conditions attached? Why, it would simply unravel, wouldn’t it? Who would strive to be good? Who would want to be righteous? What reason, what motivation, would people have to keep the law when this reckless proclamation has already announced that the law has come to an end? If we go about just giving away this gospel indiscriminately—to sinners, no less!—then what will become of our prospects for ‘spiritual growth’? For ‘self-improvement’? For ‘virtue-development’? ‘Shall we sin that grace may abound?’”

            Of course, for the ethicist writing a book on virtue in his perch high above the world, the confession of Amsdorf is and can be nothing but “false and offensive,” but for the poor sinner lying on her deathbed, it is the truest word that can be spoken. Amsdorf was no fool. He knew that it was impossible for true faith not to produce good works, just as it is impossible for true fire not to produce heat and light. Where one is, there the other follows necessarily—but not in the sense of being under compulsion, as if some law were unnaturally forcing or coercing it to do so from the outside. Rather, good works are natural to faith, just as good fruit is natural to the good tree. Faith produces its fruits freely, spontaneously, before the law even has a chance to enforce them. Yet, when faith is in the dock, sitting before the judgment throne of God, and is posed the question, “Do you have any good works to contribute here?” faith can do no other than boldly confess with Amsdorf, “To be sure, I have a bundle of good works I could set before the court, but I count them as nothing. In fact, if I were to regard even the greatest work among them as something, it would only have the power to damn me and send me to hell. So you are more than welcome to take these works of mine and do with them as you wish—I have no use for them whatever. Christ alone is my righteousness.”

            But how can Christian faith be so uncompromisingly bold? So frighteningly free? St. Paul supplies us with the answer in his second letter to the church at Corinth: “Since we have such a hope, we are very bold…” And what is this hope? Answer: it is our hope in the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ, a glory so new and so permanent that whatever could be said to have had splendor before its arrival “has come to have no splendor at all.” Moses did his best to keep the fleeting and transient glory of the old covenant under wraps, putting a veil over his face in order that the Israelites might not see the end of it. This same veil remains draped over the eyes of all whose hope rests in that now faded splendor, “because only through Christ is the veil taken away.” And we now, with unveiled faces, are free to behold the glory of God in the face of his Son, into whose image we are being transformed, not according to the law, but according to faith alone. Such faith grasps, not a part of, but the whole Christ—with everything he has; and where Christ is, there is the Spirit; “and where the Spirit is, there is freedom.”

            The transfiguration of our Lord occurs approximately one week after Peter’s confession: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” It is on this confession of Christ as Lord that the church is founded and built, and against which the gates of hell, though always assailing, will never prevail. So why, then, on being awakened by the sight of Christ’s glory—his raiment turned dazzling white, his face shining like the sun, the prophets Moses and Elijah standing beside him—does Peter seemingly forget this confession for which the Lord had called him blessed only eight days prior and instead blurt out: “Master, it is well that we are here; let us make three tabernacles, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah”? We are told that Peter said this without thinking—nothing new for Peter! But before he could even finish, a bright cloud overshadowed them (that is, he and James and John) and a voice came through the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”

            But why was Peter so mistaken in what he said? What was so wrong about wanting to remain in the presence of such unspeakable glory? Can we really blame him for wanting to keep Moses and Elijah around just a little longer? Forget for the moment the obvious problem of his trying to draw Christ back into the fading splendor of the old covenant. To be sure, Christ is not merely one tabernacle among others—he is the tabernacle in which the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily (Col. 2:9). The difference between Christ and the prophets Moses and Elijah is not one of degree but of kind. The splendor that Christ brings to and for us sinners is not some “improved version” of the old, as if Christ were merely doing repair work on us. No. Rather, the splendor of Christ violently tears the veil away from the fading glory of the old covenant, revealing it to be nothing, and, out of this nothingness, creates all things anew.

            More basic even than this, however, was Peter’s mistake of trying to do something to acquire God’s glory—or, at least, to keep the glory from departing. “Master, it is well that we are here. Let us make three tabernacles!” But when the cloud came and overshadowed them, they turned their faces to the ground in fear and trembling. And if that were not terrifying enough, the voice of the Father himself broke out of the cloud and addressed them. And what did the Father say? Did he say, “That’s right! You’d better keep your heads down! Do I have to spell out everything for you guys? Come on! Wise up! Or I may just have to find my Boy some new disciples!” No. He did not terrorize their conscience with threats, but instead graciously set Christ before their eyes: “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” It was upon hearing these words that the disciples lifted their faces from the ground, seeing neither Moses nor Elijah any longer, but Christ alone.

            So here is the command God gives concerning his Son: Listen to him! But what is it that Christ wants to say? What is this word that the Father is so determined to give us by means of his Son? “And behold, two men were talking with Jesus, Moses and Elijah, who both appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem.” The word here for “departure” in the Greek is exodoV, which may also be translated as “death.” It is a word that conjures up visions of Israel’s exodus from bondage to freedom, from the land of Egypt to the land of promise. It was in this exodus, led by the prophet Moses, that God made his glory known: in the parting of the Red Sea; in the lifting up of the bronze serpent; in the manna that fell from the sky; in the awe and the terror of Mt. Sinai. In his Lectures on Romans, Luther had this to say about the exodus:

“…The exodus of the people Israel has for a long time been interpreted to signify the transition from vice to virtue. But one should, rather, interpret it as the way from virtue to the grace of Christ, because virtues are often the greater and worse faults the less they are regarded as such…”

            What is Luther saying here? Is he saying that we sinners are all too prone to turning the gospel into a law? To turning the promise of the forgiveness of sins into a project for cultivating our virtues? To turning the gift of Christ and his cross into a quest for achieving higher and higher levels of personal holiness? Yes. He is saying all of these things. But he is saying something much more than this. Luther is not only saying that virtue is not the solution to our predicament as sinners, but that virtue is precisely our problem! Our problem is that we are all hopelessly addicted to self-justification, to being found righteous in ourselves. Our problem is that we, like Peter, want the splendor of the law to stick around just a little longer, to not fade away. The old being in us prefers a Christ who is Lawgiver par excellence; a kind of Moses on steroids. And so we imagine that Christ has come to fan the law’s dying embers, to increase its flames, and to hoist it up as a shining beacon to light the path to heaven.

            “If I could only have just a little more time,” the old being tells itself, “then I could make myself acceptable before God.” This is why the world is so offended by the kingdom Christ brings: it ruins everything for the self-justifying sinner by announcing that on the cross everything has already been done. With the arrival of this new kingdom, all pious dreams of climbing the ladder of the law to holiness are gathered like weeds and thrown into the fire. A kingdom such as this: in which the sins of the ungodly are unexpectedly and undeservedly forgiven, in which all account books are erased by the mere preaching of a word, can only mean death for the old being. And who wants to die? So the prayer is raised, “O Lord, let your kingdom come—but not quite yet!” “O Lord, send me a preacher—but not here! Not now!” To be sure, the old being is happy to let God ride shotgun in a “purpose-driven life”—so long as Christ keeps his hands away from the wheel! The old being even on occasion enjoys talking up the idea of “grace”—so long as “grace” is reduced to a kind of magical pixie dust sprinkled on the free will, allowing it to spread its wings and flutter up to heaven. In the end, though, all such talk amounts to the same thing: the old being’s attempt to do something; to deny death and the cross; to escape God’s gracious will to make all things new.    

The exodus of the Christian—the evangelical exodus—is not one from vice to virtue, but from virtue to Christ! It is not you who is moving toward your goal of perfection, who is gradually progressing up the ladder to holiness, but it is your goal—Jesus Christ—who is moving toward you, who is perfecting you, and who is transforming you “from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit”; and “where the Spirit is, there is freedom.”

            It is only from the perspective of the freedom faith brings—and “for which Christ has set us free” (Gal. 5:1)—that we can begin to understand the boldness with which Amsdorf clung to the cross alone for his righteousness, confessing all of his works to be nothing but filthy rags and polluted garments. And it is the treasure of the gospel that this weak, earthen vessel has been called to preach and deliver to you this morning: The exodus is over. Moses is dead. The law has come to an end for faith, for the one who believes on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. So do as the Father commands and listen to his beloved Son, who says to you, here and now: “My righteousness is yours. Your sin is mine. And even though you are only too eager to try and snatch it back from my pierced side, I refuse to return it. Have you not heard? I have already done everything. There is nothing left for you to do. So just sit down! Shut up! And for once in your life just listen to me: ‘You are my beloved, my chosen, in whom I am well pleased.’”

            And now that you have received this glorious treasure of the gospel and have made Christ your own, the question to ask is no longer “Shall we sin that grace may abound?” (for how can you who have died to sin still live in it?) but rather “What are you going to do now that you are finally free to live outside of yourself? To have all of creation returned to you as a free and undeserved gift? To realize, after all that time searching the sky for a stairway to heaven, that your neighbor is standing next to you here on the ground, and who, unlike God, could use some of your good works?” So now go! And boldly live out your freedom with faces unveiled, knowing that “he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6).

May the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, unto life everlasting. AmenW