7.27.08 L17 Christ has Staked His Death on the Kingdom for Us

• One of my uncles in Indiana kept a large, white, milk-glass vase filled to overflowing with pennies
  • I hope I don't scandalize anyone, but this vase held the pennies for the family penny poker games that were played a couple of nights each week during the summer
  • Now if you are scandalized by gambling, let me assure you that I haven't played penny poker in over 30 years, never play the lottery, spent exactly $2 in the nickel slots at Vegas the other year, and only once have played charity bingo
  • But those summer childhood nights were different
    • Aunts and Uncles and assorted cousins would converge there in Indiana on vacation, and have a great time on those July and August evenings
    • There were strict house rules – a 3 penny limit on raises, and no one was allowed to lose more than 50 cents in an evening
    • If you couldn't figure out your hand, someone who had already folded would be glad to help you with your cards
    • If you were running low on pennies, sometimes, but not always, a kindly aunt or uncle would slip a few pennies your way
    • But amid the laughter and the late night snacks, we got to know each other in a different way
    • I started to get a sense who tended to truthful, and who tended to bluff
    • –who could keep a straight face when they were holding nothing, and who looked excited when they held a good hand
  • But still the stakes, the winnings, were small – on a good night you might win 75 cents!
  • The losses were also small – on a bad night, you might could only lose two quarters
• But life is NOT like a poker game
  • The stakes are higher
  • The threatened losses are far greater
  • Several centuries ago there was a French scientist and mathematician named Blaise Pascal, who became a devout Christian
    • Some wondered how such a rational, intelligent person could believe in a God of wonder and even resurrection
  • So Pascal responded to his critics by saying that he had made a bet, a grand wager
    • Pascal said that he was betting that God could be trusted, but Pascal said that if he was wrong, it wouldn't make any difference
    • But if he was right, and if God could be trusted, then Pascal said it would make all the difference in the world and all the difference in his life
• Pascal's Wager, as it is called, is a clever answer to doubters
• But I think God calls us, and in particular, several verses in today's gospel reading call us, to a faith that is even richer and deeper than a wager
• Within the gospel reading for today we have two parables that make the very same point
  • In the one parable, we hear that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure that someone buried in a field, and when someone discovers the lost treasure, he goes and sells everything that he owns to buy that field with its buried treasure
  • In the other, Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant who is rummaging through a bunch of pearls in the marketplace when he finds one of extraordinary value, so the merchant goes and sells all that she has to buy that one pearl of great value
  • In both stories, the Kingdom of God is valuable and desirable
    • The Kingdom is so wonderful, so precious, and so desirable that it is worth selling all that we have in order to obtain it
    • That is to say, the Kingdom of God is worth putting all that we have, betting or wagering all that we own, or staking our entire life on it
• Why is it that the Kingdom is worth staking all our resources, and indeed our very lives on it?
• Why is it that the Kingdom of God is worth betting it all?
• Because God has already staked everything that God has on us!
  • God has already put forth his son in the bargain to seal the promises of the Kingdom
  • God has already staked his own death on the cross to cancel the debt of our sin
  • Jesus, God in the flesh, has already been raised from the grave to demonstrate the promise that our sin stays in the grave, but also – also that life in the Kingdom of God begun in Jesus Christ has been promised to us
• We don't buy the Kingdom with our money or our lives – the Kingdom has already been bought, paid for, and given to us
• But the gift of the Kingdom, the promise of the Kingdom, the forgiveness and life of the Kingdom – this Kingdom of God is of such extraordinary value that if WE COULD BUY IT, it would be worth all that we are and all that we have
• But since we cannot buy the Kingdom, because Christ has already bought and sealed it, all we can do is place our lives – place all that we are, and place all that we have in service to the God who has bought and baptized us, the God who forgives and feeds us, and the God who will raise us at the last day but who now sends us out as servants and in witnesses as the kingdom's disciples.

Back to Top