Father: You Gave, Now Grant

Father: You Gave, Now Grant

First Sunday after Easter

Collect: Almighty Father, who hast given thine only Son to die for our sins, and to rise again for our justification; Grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, that we may always serve thee in pureness of living and truth; through the merits of the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Sermon Text: The Collect

Texts on which the collect is based:

...Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification (Romans 4:24,25, ESV)

Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (1 Corinthians 5:8, ESV).

Think about moods. Not the kinds of moods in which you may wake up and go to bed. Rather the moods of verbs - which we learned about long ago in school. One mood is the indicative mood. The indicative indicates or says what is - it states a fact. The other mood is the imperative. The imperative says what should be - it issues a command. Fact: “You are the dog.” Command: “Get out of my chair.”

The Collect is based on two verses in St. Paul’s letters. One uses indicative verbs. It declares a fact. The other uses imperative verbs. It gives a command.

This “grammar lesson” is important because it tells us something very important about Paul’s theology. For Paul the indicative comes before the imperative. Paul states facts before he gives commands. “What is” comes before “what you must do.”

1. Indicative: Fact

The Collect begins “Almighty Father, who hast given thine only Son to die for our sins, and to rise again for our justification.”  It is based on Romans 4:25: “(Jesus) was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.”

1.1. Paul says 3 things if the first chapters of Romans: (1) Gentiles are sinners. (2) Jews are sinners. (3) All are are sinners. If we are not sinners, then Romans 4:25 is a solution for a non-existent problem.

There is a sense in which almost everyone will admit to being a sinner. “I do things I shouldn’t do.” “Sometimes I don’t live up to my own standards.” “I have disappointed my family.” “I have let down my friends.” The problem comes with the qualifications we make after saying we’re sinners. “I’m a sinner, but basically I’m a pretty good person.” “I’m a sinner, but there are a lot worse ones.” “I’m a sinner, but not that kind of sinner.” We may think if we have not killed anyone, or embezzled any money, or  committed a serious sexual sin, we are more or less ok.

But St. Paul says:

...all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written:

“None is righteous, no, not one;

        no one understands;

        no one seeks for God.

All have turned aside; together they have become  

 worthless;

    no one does good,

   not even one.”

For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short    of the glory of God… (Romans 3:9-12,22,23).

1.2. Paul is addressing the fact that we are sinners when says Jesus was delivered up for our sins, our tresspasses. The word “sin” means “missing the mark” as when you shoot a pistol and miss the target. We miss the mark of perfect obedience, which includes our motives. We do not love God with all our being, and we do not love our neighbor as ourselves. The word “trespass” means to violate a boundary, as when you cross a property line marked “no trespassing.” We trespass when we cross the boundaries of conduct God has set for our conduct in the 10 Commandments.

1.3. Christ was delivered up for our sins and trespasses. He was delivered up into the hands of wicked men - the Jews who demanded his death and the Romans who crucified him. But more importantly he was delivered up to the penalty for our sins. He was delivered up to the judgment we deserve for our trespasses. This is how our sins are forgiven. Christ took our sins and was delivered up to death and condemnation for us.

1.4. But Christ not only was delivered up for our sins; he was raised for our justification. “Justification” is a legal word. When a person is charged with a crime, and his case goes to a jury, and the jury acquits him, he is justified - considered innocent in the eyes of the law. Had Christ died and remained under the power of death, we would, as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:17, still be in our sins. But the resurrection declares that God is satisfied with the work of salvation Christ did for us on the cross. We are justified - God declares us acquitted of the guilt of our sins and righteous in his court of justice. It is not that we have somehow achieved righteousness by our good deeds or received an infusion of righteousness through the sacraments, but we are accounted righteous and treated as righteous for Jesus’s sake.

All who put their whole hope of salvation in Christ and his saving work, are forgiven their sins and looked upon as righteous in

God’s sight.  

2. Imperative: Command

The collect continues with “Grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, that we may always serve thee in pureness of living and truth.” This is request is based on the command in 1 Corinthians 5:8: “Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

2.1. Paul has in mind the Jewish Feast of Unleavened Bread which lasts for 7 days after Passover. Leaven is not yeast but a fermented grain that works like yeast. It is placed in the bread dough to make it rise. When the Jews left Egypt in a hurry, they did not have time to let their bread rise so they ate unleavened bread. The Feast of Unleavened Bread commemorates that time. God commanded, “For seven days no leaven is to be found in your houses” (Exodus 12:19). Over time customs developed about thoroughly cleaning houses to remove all traces of leaven. Today observant Jews can spend weeks cleaning every nook and cranny of their homes to remove the slightest trace of leaven.

2.2. Paul tells Christians that Christ our Passover has been sacrificed, so it is now time for us to keep the festival of salvation by getting rid the old leaven of of malice and evil. Malice is an angry disposition, having ill will toward other people. Evil is a broad word that includes every imaginable kind of wickedness. However, here Paul is thinking particularly about acting out our malice. We show malice when we gossip about other people, when we slander them or run down their reputations, when we wish bad things to happen to them, when we take pleasure in their misfortunes. I don’t need to tell you that malice is something that exists in the world among unbelievers and is exhibited in business and politics, marriage and family, and every kind human relationship. But, what should concern us is that it exists also in churches among Christians. A spirit of malice is like leaven. Once it begins to be indulged and expressed it can corrupt the whole person and then spread throughout the whole church. It can make worship unacceptable to God, cause broken relationships, disrupt fellowship, corrupt the conduct of members and, and destroy a church’s reputation. So Paul says, “Put it out of your own heart,  and remove it from your congregation.”

2.3. With the leaven of malice removed we are prepared to keep the festival of salvation with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. These two things ought to characterize us as Christians in our relationships with one another and should be seen in the way we live together in the church. We are called to be sincere, not hypocritical, but real and genuine in our dealings with one another.  We are called to be true - not playing games with one another or betraying one another -  but honest and faithful in all our relationships.

2.4. A lot is riding on putting away malice and evil and practicing sincerity and truth. These things make it possible to serve the Lord in pureness of living and truth. We want purity in our lives so that we please the Lord in our conduct. We want pureness is truth, or doctrine, so that what we believe is not what we want to believe or what we hear some TV preacher say, but is in accord with the truth revealed in God’s Word.

In the Christian life the indicative always comes before the imperative - the facts before the commands. The fact is that Christ was delivered up for our sins and raised for our justification must come first. We cannot obey the command unless we are forgiven and justified. The command is that we put away malice and evil and live in sincerity and truth so we can always serve God in pureness of life and truth.  

2.5. But getting rid malice and evil and living with sincerity and truth is not easy. We must ask the Lord for help. He gave his Son for us. Now we ask that he would also give us these blessings of character and conduct. We know the weakness of our sinful selves, how easy it is to let the old leaven begin to spread through our hearts and then within our church. We know how challenging it can be to be sincere and truthful.

Even in our asking God for help we come, not by our own merits, but by the merits of Christ. We can never come to God in prayer trusting in anything good about about us to gain God’s favor. We come trusting the merits of Christ. No matter how much progress we may make in the Christian life, no matter how consistent may be our Christian living, we never have the merit to gain God’s mercy. It is always and only be the merits of Christ, his Son.

That is what we do as we come to this Table. We ask that by faith we may eat the sacrificed body and drink the shed blood of Jesus. We don’t have a right to these blessings because we’ve been good this past week. We ask by the merits of his Son that by this Sacrament we may be preserved in body and soul unto eternal life. We ask that by Christ’s merits we may feed upon him in our hearts by faith.