28 August 2019
Text: 2 Tim 4:1-8 (Matt 5:13-19)
In the name of +
Jesus. Amen.
Today,
dear brothers and sisters, we remember a beloved brother in Christ, Augustine
of Hippo Regius in Northern Africa. He
was one of the most extraordinary theologians and preachers in the history of
the Church. He died on this date 1,589
years ago. But what’s a few centuries
for us Christians? We are the people of eternity.
And
we are also people of gratitude. We are
grateful for the heroes in the faith who came before us. This word “grateful” is based on the Latin
word for “grace,” and when we think of St. Augustine’s preaching, that is what
we think about. Augustine understood that
the Christian faith is all about grace.
He understood original sin. He
understood why the Trinity is so important, and why the cross is central to everything
in our day to day lives.
Bishop
Augustine knew this not just as an intellectual or as a churchman. He understood it as a sinner who was redeemed
by Christ. As a young man, he departed
from both the Pagan faith of his father Patrick, and the Christian faith of his
mother Monica. He was involved in a
religious cult, and lived a life of selfish pleasure and hedonistic sexuality. But Monica prayed every day for her son. And ultimately, it was the preaching of
Monica’s pastor, Bishop Ambrose, who proclaimed the Gospel with the clarity of
any Lutheran pastor who would follow in his train a thousand years later. And by the way, St. Monica’s prayers were
answered concerning her husband Patrick, who converted to Christianity before
his death.
It
was the preaching of Christ the crucified one, the preaching of the Gospel of
forgiveness, that won over Augustine. It
was the Word of God – as it always is – that converted him. He would enter the holy ministry himself, and his
sermons are still studied to this day. He
became a bishop and world-famous theologian.
Augustine
took heed of the Holy Scriptures, especially our epistle lesson in which St. Paul
exhorts all preachers: “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ
Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom:
preach the Word; we ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and
exhort, with complete patience and teaching.”
And
did Augustine ever preach (and teach and write and speak) God’s Word! Augustine’s clarity gave us a vocabulary to
talk about original sin, the idea of the “just war,” and how we should behave
as Christians when our country and culture seem to be coming apart. Augustine lived in the days of the fall of
Rome. People were in despair. And they turned to their pastor and his
proclamation of Jesus for comfort.
For
it is just in such times, dear friends, that we need solid preaching. “For,” St. Paul says, “the time is coming when
people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will
accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn
away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”
Augustine
was a former Manichaean. This was an
ancient cult that appealed to the intellect. Because of his former belief in such things,
and now able to see through them, Augustine wrote many books to defend the
Christian faith against heresies. These
books are still used in seminaries today.
Augustine
was an expert in philosophy, but his true gift was understanding the Holy
Scriptures. He took St. Paul’s
exhortation to heart, and preached the Word of God, in season and out of
season. He would debate anyone. He was honest about his former life. His preaching focused on Christ and His work
of atoning for our sins. Augustine’s
sermons were so important that some 350 of them were preserved, copied by hand throughout
the centuries, and are still read today.
In
good times and in bad, we Christians are to be the “salt of the earth.” We must never lose our zest. We are not called to get along with the
world, but rather to speak the truth and give the world hope. We are called to be the “light of the world.” We are surrounded by darkness, dear friends,
even as Rome was collapsing in Augustine’s day. Today, our western civilization seems to be
crumbling in an ungodly implosion of ignorance and the loss of a moral compass.
It is just for this time that we need to
let our light shine, looking to those like Augustine, who courageously took on
the challenges to the Christian faith of his day.
This
is not to say, dear friends, that we all must be theologians. Far from it!
We are called to many vocations. God places us into many and various callings
and contact with people who need to hear the good news, with people who
desperately want the hope that is ours by grace. We are surrounded by darkness and a culture of
death, and we, dear brothers and sisters, have the antidote. We have the cure to death itself!
The
people around us will not find hope in politics or hedonism or false religions.
Their hope is not to be found in
technology or escapism. Their hope is in
the name of the Lord. Their hope is
found in the preaching and teaching of Augustine, because Augustine was a
faithful preacher of Christ and Him crucified!
And
in times of darkness, the Lord will raise up great prophetic voices like
Malachi and Paul, like Ambrose and Augustine, like Luther and the many
proclaimers of Christ in our own day. The
Lord will not suffer His Word to lay fallow. For even when the darkness seems to be choking
us to death, remember, dear friends, that the Word of God cannot be
extinguished. The Word of God has free
rein. The Word of God does not return
void!
And
the Word of God is preached, proclaimed by men who have themselves been called
out of darkness, man who know what it is to be forgiven, men who have lived
according to hedonism and false religiosity and have found them wanting.
Let
us pray that the Lord of the Church raise up more Augustines in our day, dear
brothers and sisters. We need faithful
preachers who will indeed proclaim Christ courageously and soundly, who will be
sober-minded in their teaching, who will endure suffering in their confession,
who will do the work of an evangelist in their love for the lost, and who will
fulfill their ministry by the grace of God.
Let
us thank God for St. Augustine and his sound teaching, for St. Monica his
mother for her tireless prayers, for St. Ambrose, whose own faithful preaching in
season and out of season was used by God to bring Augustine into the Christian
faith, and of course, let us thank Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with
the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
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