The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



The Second Sunday in Lent, Year A, March 20, 2011, St. Paul’s Church Murfreesboro

“Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” (Rom. 4:3).

“The Day of Reckoning”: when I was growing up “the Day of Reckoning” was a figurative day when bad people would get what they deserved, when folks who misbehaved and got away with it for the time being would finally be punished. I can hear a voice in my head using this phrase, a voice from my childhood. So we might say this week, for instance, that there’s a “day of reckoning” coming in Libya. (Events in that country seem to have overtaken this sermon, if I can believe what I heard on the radio this morning, so please to remember the people of that country and all others in danger in your prayers.)

The notion of a “day of reckoning” belongs to the world of the ledger book, where everything is counted and has to “add up.” In the same way, “I reckon” is a sort of old fashioned way of saying “I figure,” and of course figuring is done with numbers, so it’s the same metaphor from the world of accounting. In accounting it’s all got to balance out. So the idea of a “Day of Reckoning” satisfies our human need for moral calculation and figuring, since in a just world the bad will be punished and the good rewarded and the cosmic books will finally balance out.

Paul the Apostle uses this same word “reckon” when he quotes from the fifteenth chapter of Genesis in our second reading today, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” But Paul’s point is not about a “day of reckoning” but about something else: about the way in which God extends a gracious margin to people who are marginal, of “no account” in the world of the Jewish Law. Paul is telling the story of Abraham, who is the ancestor of God’s People the Jews, but also the one by whom all the nations will be blessed. He is to be “the father of many nations” (Rom 4:17), as Paul quotes again, now from the seventeenth chapter of Genesis (Gen. 17:5). God is extending relationship to the Gentiles, people who were outside the Law, by including them in the family of Abraham. He’s counting them as if they counted, as if they were not “no account” (as my Grandmother might have said). God’s making them count, making them count for something, through their faith in God who raised Jesus from the dead. Now they are included under the New Covenant, included as members of Christ so that they may live in him. They are “made righteous” (Rom. 5:19), that is brought into right relationship with God, by being included through faith in Christ. He is himself “our righteousness” (1 Cor. 1:30), as Paul says somewhere else in another letter.

It is Jesus Christ who makes this inclusion possible. You all have had to wade through quite a bit of theology today, not just the fourth chapter of the Letter to the Romans which is challenging enough but also through this sermon. But if you remember nothing else from this sermon, remember the punch line. Unfortunately the punch line for this sermon isn’t really found in our second reading today but a little bit later in the same chapter. “Now the words, ‘it was reckoned to him,’ (Paul says) were written not for Abraham’s sake alone, but for ours also” (Rom. 4:23-24). We too who believe in God who raised Jesus from the dead are made righteous through faith. We too have been included in God’s People by being accounted members of the family of Abraham. God did that, we didn’t, and he did it through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our presence here at St. Paul’s Church, the apostle suggests, is a part of a plan that God laid down long ago when he chose Abraham and called him to be the father of many nations, including us. Those who are being confirmed today are reminding us all of our call, and of our common baptism as members of his Body.

In other words, God has extended his margin to us, made us to count through grace. Our names are written in the ledger, in the great cosmic Book of Life from the Book of Revelation that brings us back to the world of the Day of Reckoning, the day of God’s justice and judgment. (I can’t seem to get away from that “Day of Reckoning.”) So what to say about “the Day of Reckoning” in light of everything else? Well, maybe this: when it comes to moral calculation we’re pretty good at figuring out what others owe, but lousy at working on our own accounts. God has been gracious to us, and we need to be gracious in turn. He is the Judge. There’s a difference between being made righteous and being self-righteous. Remember, all of this has been “reckoned” to us, not by right but by grace. The work of Lent is to come to a deeper understanding of all that we have received so that we can give thanks to God and share our gifts with others.

- The Rt. Rev’d John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee

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