Sermon: “We Are the Lord's”
The Right Reverend Charles G. vonRosenberg
Third Bishop of East Tennessee

[This sermon by Bishop vonRosenberg was delivered using the following notes.]

Today marks the fourth anniversary of a horrible and traumatic event in the life of our country. "9 / 11" tore away from us a national sense of security. Gone is a kind of innocence about invulnerability and, if we are honest, gone, too, is the former feeling of superiority among the nations of the world … a superiority whose true reality was bound up in our isolation. After 9 / 11, though, we in the United States know that we are isolated no longer. We find ourselves suddenly and uncomfortably vulnerable. The security on which we had relied has been proven to be false.

Then, two weeks ago, our country experienced another traumatic catastrophe … this time of natural origins - Hurricane Katrina. Survivors on the Gulf Coast sometimes reacted in anger at the delay and inadequacy of response. Newscasters and citizens everywhere commented that scenes from the Gulf Coast seemed like a foreign country - not the United States of America. We have been amazed - perhaps, even, overwhelmed - by the demands of providing life's basic necessities to citizens of our own country. Once again, therefore, our sense of security has been shaken.

What does our faith have to say in situations like these? Does Christianity speak to our loss of security, such as that experienced in an attack of terrorists or in a hurricane's fury?

I suppose that the greatest existential questions about security involve death. Death marks the moment of ultimate loss of security in this life. And, one of the most familiar Bible passages at the time of death - at funerals - is our Second Reading today. "We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's" (Rom 14:7-8).

Therefore, my friends, one of the clearest messages of our faith is that our security rests with the Lord. National security cannot finally save us. Freedom from terrible and destructive storms cannot absolutely be relied upon. Ultimately, it is only God who is the source of dependable and final security.

The Gospel reading today reminds us that Jesus always called into question the ways of the world - those ways that promise security but that cannot deliver on that promise.

Remember that Peter first asked Jesus a question about forgiveness within the membership of the Church. And Peter, thinking himself especially gracious, asks Jesus if he should forgive a sinful church member "as many as seven times." But Jesus' response indicates the extent that he operates beyond the expectations of the world. "Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times" (Matt 18:22).

Next, Jesus told that strange parable about a king and a slave and a fellow slave. The parable had to do with forgiveness and with the expectation that we, who ask for forgiveness, should also exercise forgiveness ourselves. As the Lord's Prayer puts it, "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us."

However, this parable of Jesus has a different meaning, too, at a different level. Over and over again, Jesus teaches that the way this world works does not correspond to the way of the kingdom of heaven. For instance, that slave in today's parable - the slave who was owed a debt by his fellow slave - had every right in the world to treat his fellow slave the way he did. But Jesus makes the message clear that more than that is expected from citizens of the kingdom of heaven.

Therefore, as Christian people, we make decisions based on values that go beyond the limitations of this world. For instance, it is true that we should reach out in compassion and generosity to our fellow Americans who have suffered the wrath of Hurricane Katrina. However, a more profound truth is that we hold in common not just our earthly citizenship. More significant indeed is that the suffering people of Louisiana and Mississippi are fellow brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. We all are children of God Almighty. Finally, that is the connection that matters, and it defines our motivation for action.

In conclusion, then, that frame of reference for our actions makes clear where our security really lies - the only reliable place for ultimate security … the hands of God Almighty, who is the Father of us all. "We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's."

Copyright © 2005 The Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee