The Obedience of Faith.
Advent 4
December 18, 2022
Fr. Tim Nunez
There is a challenge, a quandary if you will, that affects the people who serve on breakfast teams. They have to make a choice when they cook on Sunday mornings. Do they finish breakfast, clean up and go home and watch the service online knowing they have served Our Lord and his church? Or, do they rush home for a quick shower and change of clothes and return for service. The third option is to simply stay and attend service.
The concern they typically raise about that third option is that they don’t want to smell like bacon. I don’t understand that. Bacon has a beautiful smell. People get excited when they walk into a home and smell bacon. I’d say it’s a favorite smell, even attractive. They should make a cologne of it: Bacon. I can see the ads, featuring Kevin Bacon. He would turn to the camera and say, “You can smell the sizzle.”
I deeply appreciate our breakfast teams and each must decide what to do according to his or her own conscience. But if you do smell bacon, say, “Thank you.” The smell of bacon and bacon itself being a part of our life in the church points to an issue we find in our scriptures today, our release from the law and our call to “the obedience of faith.” If we weren’t released from the law, no bacon.
Rome was, of course, the capital of the empire and center of their Greco-Roman world. The newly formed church in Rome had Christians who had accepted Jesus as the fulfillment and extension of their Jewish faith and Christians who had been Gentile pagans who had heard the Gospel and converted directly to following Jesus.
We can see Paul speaking to the hearts of both of those groups within the church in the introduction of his letter to them. (Romans 1:1-7) Paul opens it with greetings and an immediate linking of the Gospel to the “prophets in the holy scriptures,” which for them was what we call the Old Testament, as well as emphasizing that Jesus “was descend from David,” their great king. The Jewish Christians warm right up to that.
Then he pivots to “the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles.” The Gentiles have never followed the law, but now they follow Christ and are obedient to him and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. He pulls both groups together with “To all God’s beloved in Rome.” All. And all of that pulling together brings both groups into one greeting in one very long sentence.
Paul will go on at great length, and this is the longest letter of his that we have, about how the Jewish Christians are released from the law and the Gentile Christians join them under salvation by grace through faith rather than adherence to the law. We behave out of our love for him, not a set of rules.
We see this shift from law to grace already at work in Joseph, long before Jesus has said or done anything. The first thing we hear about Joseph is that he is a righteous man. In his place and time, that meant that he was a faithful observer of the law. Under Jewish law, when a man and woman became betrothed, it was the first and legally binding step of a two-step process of marriage. It wasn’t like our custom of engagement.
Once they were officially pledged, they would begin a process of up to a year for the man to establish and prepare their home. The marriage would be “consummated” in the second step, when they came together as husband and wife. In Greek the same word is used for coming together as a household and as a couple.
When Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant and knew it was not by him, he naturally purposed to follow the law, choosing to dismiss or divorce her – quietly rather than making a big public issue of it – but in any case to end the marriage. That’s what the law said to do.
But then he heard a Word from the Lord. God came to Joseph through an angel in a dream, as he had come to his namesake so many centuries before. (You remember the story of Joseph, Jacob’s son, with the coat of many colors and so forth, right?)
You’ve had dreams. Did you ever have one of those dreams where you wake up and you are so relieved that it was a dream and you’re not horribly late and lost and there’s no T-Rex looking for you? (You were with me right up until the T-Rex, weren’t you?) You’re so glad it was just a dream. Just a dream.
It’s extraordinary that Joseph met the Lord in his dream and knew it was true. That is the root of the “obedience of faith.” We tend to live by and large by our will, making choices moment by moment. Along with that we have a sense of conscience, which seems a bit strange to talk about because there’s a you inside of you that holds you accountable, like a separate voice but it’s still yours.
And your conscience tells you, “You really need to do the right thing.” And we may joust around with it, but, again, that’s us debating with us inside our heads. That conscience can feel like a voice of our faith because we are so steeped in a Judeo-Christian moral structure in Western Culture whether we like it or not.
Now step beyond that and consider another voice, a distinctly other voice, an alien voice, from outside yourself yet speaking to your mind. It’s not your will, not your conscience, and you know it’s the truest, purest and strongest voice there is. It’s God. And it doesn’t matter that he has come in the context of a dream or in the form of an angel, you know his Word is good and right and true. And you know his Word is not coming to persuade or appeal. These are commands.
“Do not be afraid to marry her. The child is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
Joseph heard the Lord. How did he know it was true? Well, the truth of God is love, and what the Lord told Joseph is supremely loving. And what we find in God’s commands to Joseph is his great love for his people. You remember how Jesus put it to Nicodemus,“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that all who believe in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
The great football coach and analyst Lou Holtz (who is a devout Christian) once said, “People need love most when they deserve it least.” God told Joseph, “He [Jesus] will save people from their sins.” Those are some of the most loving words ever spoken.
Joseph is a tremendous example for us. We should do our best to live Godly lives by choosing him, choosing to follow his will in our daily decisions, feeding our consciences steadily through worship, prayer and study so that they can be that steady corrective guide, and listening for the Lord’s direction, especially when things are in a critical moment. Which is to say, opening our hearts and minds to receive Christ daily. That’s’ how we “purify our conscience.”
The Collect of the Day ties the themes of the day’s readings together. Let’s pray through today’s again:
Collect for the Fourth Sunday of Advent
PURIFY OUR CONSCIENCE, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. AMEN