Spiritual Transcripts
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
October 30, 2005
Joshua 3:7-17; 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13; Matthew 23:1-12
Joshua 3 7 ¶ The LORD said to Joshua, “This day I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, so that they may know that I will be with you as I was with Moses. 8 You are the one who shall command the priests who bear the ark of the covenant, ‘When you come to the edge of the waters of the Jordan, you shall stand still in the Jordan.’” 9 Joshua then said to the Israelites, “Draw near and hear the words of the LORD your God.” 10 Joshua said, “By this you shall know that among you is the living God who without fail will drive out from before you the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites: 11 the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth is going to pass before you into the Jordan. 12 So now select twelve men from the tribes of Israel, one from each tribe. 13 When the soles of the feet of the priests who bear the ark of the LORD, the Lord of all the earth, rest in the waters of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan flowing from above shall be cut off; they shall stand in a single heap.”
14 ¶ When the people set out from their tents to cross over the Jordan, the priests bearing the ark of the covenant were in front of the people. 15 Now the Jordan overflows all its banks throughout the time of harvest. So when those who bore the ark had come to the Jordan, and the feet of the priests bearing the ark were dipped in the edge of the water, 16 the waters flowing from above stood still, rising up in a single heap far off at Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan, while those flowing toward the sea of the Arabah, the Dead Sea, were wholly cut off. Then the people crossed over opposite Jericho. 17 While all Israel were crossing over on dry ground, the priests who bore the ark of the covenant of the LORD stood on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan, until the entire nation finished crossing over the Jordan.1 Thessalonians 2 9 ¶ You remember our labor and toil, brothers and sisters; we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. 10 You are witnesses, and God also, how pure, upright, and blameless our conduct was toward you believers. 11 As you know, we dealt with each one of you like a father with his children, 12 urging and encouraging you and pleading that you lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.
13 ¶ We also constantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God’s word, which is also at work in you believers.Matthew 23 1 ¶ Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; 3 therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. 4 They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. 5 They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. 6 They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, 7 and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. 8 But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. 9 And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father — the one in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. 11 The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.
I. BEGINNING
Recently my board of ordained ministry requested from me a transcript. They wanted to see my seminary transcript to see how I did in my various course on theology, Bible, church history, United Methodist doctrine and polity.
The transcript is an interesting thing because it is not particularly nuanced. It doesn’t give you a lot of extra detail. That is, it tells you how you did, but it doesn’t offer any explanation for the grades. If you did worse than you were expecting, it doesn’t account for a bad teacher, a rough semester, a trouble relationship with your roommate or anything like. It just tells you what the results are. It is not a particularly grace filled document.
It is often the only instrument that we have to gauge how well a person is learning the lessons that we’ve been taught. Our grades are an imperfect system, but they are the system that we have to discern whether we are learning what our instructors wish to teach us.
II. THE TEXT
It makes me wonder what my spiritual transcript would be. As I hear a lesson like the one tonight where Jesus tells us that he is our rabbi, that he is our instructor, it makes me wonder how well I am doing at learning the lessons that Jesus teaches me.
The story we heard earlier from Matthew is a typical story from Matthew. Matthew often presents Jesus as being very much at odds with the Pharisees. Biblical scholars will tell us that the Pharisees weren’t nearly as large and influential a group in Jesus’ day as they were in the 70’s and 80’s AD when Matthew composed his gospel. Perhaps Matthew recasts debates that Jesus had with other people as debates with the Pharisees in order to make a point more crucial to his own community.
What we are able to glean about Matthew’s community was that it was made up of Jewish Christians who were seeking to lay claim to being the true inheritors of the religion of Israel. It was they and not the Pharisees who were the inheritors of the promises of Israel, and that in many ways, this accounts for the amount of language in Matthew about the Pharisees.
The Pharisees have gotten a bad rap among Christians, we make them out to be much worse than they were, but that is often the result of that kind of sectarian fighting, where we often cast the group of people that is closest to us as the group that is the farthest away. A lot of unfortunate interpretation about the Pharisees has been applied to the Jews throughout the years and has often yielded tragic results.
The lesson that we read in Matthew is a lesson about whose authority we recognize to instruct us. Jesus says:
8 But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. 9 And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father — the one in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah.
It is a statement that there is no other teacher of the law of God greater than Jesus. The Pharisees and scribes may sit on Moses’ seat, but it is the Messiah who will teach you the law of God. It is the Messiah alone whom you call your master, and to whose teachings you submit.
III. SPIRITUAL TRANSCRIPTS
I wonder then about our instructor and the lessons he taught. I wonder what my transcript would look like. If I were to summarize Jesus’ curriculum, I would have to start with the Sermon on the Mount. It starts at Matthew 5—I invite you to read it later.
As I read through it, I ask myself: have I turned the other cheek? To those who have asked of me my shirt, have I given them my cloak as well? If someone forces me to go a mile, have I gone two? Have I given to everyone who begs of me, and not refused anyone who wants to borrow from me? Have I loved my enemies? Have I let go of my anxiety? Have I refrained from judging others? Have I removed the speck in the eye of others without removing the two-by-four in my own?
To all these things I must regrettably answer that I have not. I have not been as forgiving as I ought. I have not been as humble as I ought. I have walked by people on the street who are hungry when I have money in my pocket. I have not always spoken out in terms of justice. I have not really learned well enough the lessons that my instructor has taught.
My spiritual transcript is wanting. There are holes in it. There are incompletes and downright failures. On some level that the Board of Ordained Ministry only wants to see my seminary transcript. I did a lot better at seminary than I have at Christianity.
When I take a look at that spiritual transcript, I realize that I don’t measure up. I am not good enough. If I were being graded objectively on these things, I would fail.
IV. THE REFORMATION
About 500 years ago, there was an Augustinian Monk named Martin Luther, who spent most of his career struggling to find acceptance from God. He was convinced that he was not good enough before God. He was convinced that his own failures were too great. As fate would have it, he set out to protest a practice in the church about the buying and selling of indulgences. It’s not a problem you or I are inclined to think about.
In the Medieval Catholic Church (and I should point out that it is that church we are talking about, not the modern one), there was a belief in ‘distributive justice’—you got what you deserved. Divine reward was related to earthly merit.
When it came to your salvation, it was achieved by having enough grace. Good deeds earned you grace. If I give money to the poor, I receive grace. By extension, if I give money to the church, they will help the poor, and I will receive grace. Furthermore, if I give money to the church to help to build a cathedral, or some other improvement, that helps the church, which helps the poor, and that gives me grace.
It was also believed that if you died with an insufficiency of grace, but were baptized, you would go to purgatory. But your living relatives could intercede on your behalf, by praying for you and obtaining grace for you. This they could do through the purchase of an indulgence. The money would go to the church to help the church, but the grace would go toward the ‘account’ of your deceased relative in purgatory. After enough indulgences were purchased, the dearly departed could leave purgatory for the glory of heaven.
Martin Luther objected to this system as extortion, and on October 31, 1517, 488 years ago tomorrow, he posted on the cathedral door at Wittenberg his 95 Theses. If you have ever had occasion to read them, they deal only with indulgences, a topic so remote and arcane to us that we have a hard time imagining that Luther had 95 things to say about them.
He posted the Theses on the church door and thereby began a movement within the church that would alter it forever. As the church responded to his objections, he began to develop and articulate a theology that was driven by the writings of St. Paul, and the recognition that we are saved by grace through faith and not on account of works of the law.
This became the rallying cry of what would come to be called the Protestant Reformation. If we are saved by grace through faith, then no amount of money to the church, no amount of good works, can merit salvation. The buying and selling of indulgences, owes itself more to the Greco-Roman understanding of distributive justice than it does to the Gospel.
(The Catholic Church still has indulgences—I happen to have an indulgence right here from my grandmother’s funeral—they just don’t sell them anymore, so score one for the Protestants).
And so what began as a fairly arcane disagreement over a church practice quickly became a full-blown theological schism over the issue of salvation, grace, faith and works.
V. END
Today is Reformation Sunday, a day on which we celebrate the restatement of the central idea of the reformers, that it is by God’s grace that we are saved. And yet, how quickly we forget that lesson. How quickly we try to accumulate if not works then other markers of our own merit. How quickly we are to accumulate records, transcripts of our own spiritual accomplishments, of our piety, our holiness, our frequency in attending church or participation in various committees. The amount of money we give. How frequently we read the Bible or how often we pray. How quick we are to tout our own holiness, to hold up the transcript of our own accomplishments and to say to ourselves, ‘It is because of this that I am saved.’
And yet the reality is, that when we compare ourselves to the teachings of our instructor, when we hold ourselves up to his example, we realize we have not succeeded. We have nothing of real merit about which to boast. We have no real accomplishments that could impress God. No real measure by which we could claim a holiness greater than others’. No real record to which we could point to claim that we are entitled to eternal life. Rather, we realize we fall woefully short of meriting the lives we have already been given, let alone eternal life.
And yet, our spiritual transcripts are not like our school transcripts. They do not record simply successes and failures. They do not simply record degrees of accomplishment, completion or incompletion. Our transcripts are defined by Christ, by our instructor. They are defined by the one who came and taught us, and the one through whose love, witness, and faithful self-sacrifice we have been guaranteed our salvation.
I am not worthy of it. None of us is worthy of it. And yet Christ gives it to us anyway. It is as though at the bottom of our spiritual transcripts, there is another column. In spite of the D’s and F’s, and the incompletes, there is a notation that we are to be passed because Christ—our instructor—has finished the requirements for us.
Jesus came so that we might know that God’s promises are good. So that we might know that it is grace and not our own merit that operates in the world.
It is the lesson that Luther learned and the lesson that drove the reformation.
On some level it seems hard to grasp—almost because it’s too good to be true. As it is written in Ephesians, “You are saved…by grace through faith” not you will be. Not you might be. Or you should be. Or you used to be. You are saved. Our salvation is a present reality.
Our transcripts will never measure up. We have failed at the teachings of our teacher. And yet the most important lesson that he came to teach us was the God loves us. God loves you. God loves us so much that he extends to offer of salvation to us freely by grace. Inviting us into a lifetime of faith and service, in celebration of the gift he has given us.
