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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Ezekiel 36:23-28
Isaiah 1:16-19
St. John 9:1-38
Grace to you and peace. (1 Thess 1)
Three words from God this evening, from each reading, set us
up to receive our fourth pro-tip for witnessing Jesus to the world, which is to
witness in words and deeds, as our man from St. John 9 shows us.
The first is Ezekiel 36:27, “walk in my statutes and be
careful to obey my rules”
Next from Isaiah 1:17, “learn to do good; seek justice,
correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause”
And finally, St. John 9:4, “We must work the works of him
who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.”
What this tells us is that there is a life to live as
Christians. It is a life that is different from the one we were living or
thought we were living. If we were converted as an adult, then the values we
had and the decisions we made before are not valid under God’s Law. In the
renewal of our mind, those things change and therefore, so does our life.
If we have been Christian our whole lives, then it is still
a life of back and forth. We fall back into sin, God brings us forth out of it.
There is never a “you made it” moment in this life, unless you are talking
about the Gospel. Under the Law, there is always something to do. Under the
Gospel, Jesus has done it all for us, so in Christ we “made it”.
Regardless, I still wake up each day and have to face other
people. Other people who need my attention and some who literally depend on me
for survival. God’s Law tells us to do good, to do the right thing by our
neighbor. God’s Law is so sovereign that even humanists and atheists will tell
you, “be good for goodness’s sake”. Even they know “good” is out
there…somewhere…
So the Christian is a do-gooder, a goody-two-shoes. He takes
a perspective on life that holds everyone as having a high value, morals are
good, values are good. Be ye friend or foe, God made you, loves you, and you
have value. As Jesus said, “let your light shine before others, so that they
may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Mt
5:16).
But God does not just give you this wonderful life of
service to others, neglecting yourself. There’s more. On top of being commanded
to love, there is a second level to the life of Faith. That is, before we begin
to do good, we first must hear of the good.
It is the Lutherans, then, who see the life of word and deed
repeating a cycle of three stages, in their Latin: oratio, meditatio,
tentatio; prayer, meditation, suffering. Through these means, God makes a
theologian. Not through classrooms, many books, or degrees, but through the
study of the Scriptures in the crucible of a world that wishes to destroy us,
with the devil breathing down our necks, falling to our knees in prayer,
begging the Father for His aid, continually reading and rereading the words
that He has handed down to us.
Oratio comes first, not as if from a “3-step
program”, but because one cannot study the Scriptures without prayer. This sets
the Scriptures apart from any other book. There is no other book that one must
approach solely through prayer, for there is no other book that not only
teaches about eternal life, but actually delivers it.
What do we pray for? David tells us: “Teach me your
statutes! Make me understand the way of your precepts, and I will
meditate on your wondrous works.” (Psalm 119:26b-27) We pray for the Holy
Spirit, for apart from the Holy Spirit, apart from Him Who inspired the
Scriptures and thus kept them from error, we cannot rightly understand or
interpret them. The Scriptures cannot be properly read, and no one can be a
theologian, apart from faith in Christ, faith worked by the Holy Spirit.
Meditatio means “a thinking over, contemplation,
dwelling upon.” True meditation is thinking and thinking involves content. The
Christian is not trying to turn off his thinking by meditation or clear his
mind; on the contrary, the Christian seeks to use his intellect in order to
understand the Word of God.
Although intellectual apprehension is not the goal, it is
the means to the end. The Holy Spirit works faith in the heart through the knowledge
grasped by the head. This is why we pray in the general prayers of our church:
“Help all who hear the Word rightly to understand and truly to believe it.”
Meditation is “repeating and comparing oral speech and
literal words of the book, reading and rereading them with diligent attention
and reflection, so that you may see what the Holy Spirit means by them.” (LW
34:286). Repetition is key, which is also the reason why our Sunday mornings
appear repetitive. By repetition, we increase memory, by increasing memory we
increase knowledge and therefore our love of God’s holy things.
Finally, Tentatio sounds like “tension” and indeed
means something like an “agonizing internal struggle”. Tentatio is
unique to the Christian, for though unbelievers also have internal struggles
due to tension in life, tentatio is a direct result of prayer (oratio)
and meditation (meditatio). For, when a Christian prays for the Holy
Spirit, when he meditates on God’s Word through which the Spirit works, then
the spirit of darkness, the devil, will assault him and cause tentatio.
The devil hates God and His Word and so attacks the Christian occupied with it.
Thus, David wrote, “Before I was afflicted I went astray,
but now I keep your word” (Ps 119:67). Luther writes, “For as soon as God’s
Word takes root and grows in you, the devil will harry you, and will make a
real doctor of you, and by his assaults will teach you to seek and love God’s
Word” (AE 34:287). Where the devil means to drive you from God, in tentatio,
the Lord drives you from your own weakness back to His Word.
So in your witness, whatever you do in word or deed, do it
all with a heart full of faith and love to the glory of God in Christ Jesus and
to the blessing and benefit of your neighbor. You are not a worker bee, bereft
of will and living in a vacuum. You are in the world, surrounded by neighbors
and works. Recognizing prayer, meditation, and suffering, you will be a better
witness.
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