Our Response to Christ's Redemption

A Sermon Delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on April 26, 2009 at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Hospital, Huntington, WV


Our opening collect for today includes the following phrase: “Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work”…

We could ask, “What is all His redeeming work?”, or: “What does Jesus redeem?” and the basic answer is: ‘Everything that was lost in the Fall.”

What was lost in the Fall? First and most tragically, we lost fellowship with God. Human beings, who had been created for loving and covenantal relationship with the most High, fell out of intimacy with God through Sin. They – we – also fell out of fellowship with one another, with the physical environment, and even with our own selves. In short, through the Fall, we are alienated in every aspect of our lives.

But thanks be to God, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross, God has redeemed us – all of us. There is a slogan that goes: “God saves wholes not souls” – In other words He saves redeems ALL of life, not just disembodied spirits.

So what does it mean that God has redeemed me as a whole person? And how do I respond?
Well, firstly, through the work of Christ, God redeems our relationship with Him. The blood of Christ takes away sin, not just covers it. Therefore, we now have fellowship with God and this enables us to enter into the Holy of Holies and to freely Worship Him in spirit and in truth. The dividing veil is gone and we enter in as the People of God – his very plan for human beings all along. In Response to Christ’s redemption of our relationship with God, we practice the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving; we Worship. This is what defines us Christians: as the people of God, we are a worshipping community.

Then too, Christ redeems us from our own selves. Because we have been reconciled with God, our sins are forgiven and we can be at peace with our selves once more. There is healing for our deepest personal wounds in the blood of Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit. His plan for us is to look like Jesus – to transform us daily by the renewing of our minds and hearts. (Rom 12:2). In Response, we present ourselves before God in private devotion and in personal Bible study and reflection, as well as with other spiritual disciplines that lead to our transformation into the image of Christ. We practice Formation.

Next, we note that Jesus has redeemed our relationships with others. He came to bind up the wounds of the broken hearted, to proclaim freedom to prisoners and release to captives. (is. 61:1). This applies to the world of interpersonal and societal relations. Jesus redeems our relationships with other people.

In Response we enjoy the fellowship of other believers and we reach out to others with the healing power and Grace of Christ. This is really an overlapping of Community and Mission.

Through our 8th Day Life Groups, and other types of fellowship in the body, we practice Community with the Body of Christ. We eat together and share our lives. We encourage one another personally and in the Lord. We interact as Family, as the people of God, as a Community of believers. We pray for one another and we attempt to build up one another in our faith. We respond to Christ’s redemptive work by practicing Community with one another.

But we also respond by going to our larger Community in Mission, to wherever the world is hurting. We attempt to bring the “those who do not know Christ to the knowledge and love of Him’, as one of our collects for mission states. We respond by noticing the things that hurt in our Community.

For instance, here in the Tri-State region people are suffering horribly through their addictions to drugs and alcohol – which in turn leads to all manner of crimes affecting all manner of people, from the arrest of prominent physicians for drug running, to thefts, to the murder of innocent – and not so innocent people.

Every one who suffers and dies as a result of drug or alcohol involvement is a victim of the Devil. As Christians, we ought not to stand for this, but aggressively take the Gospel to our world and reclaim everything that the Devil tries to claim for his own. Our response to Christ’s redemption of human society is to practice Mission.

Our Mission even extends to the very ground itself.

Last year, when we participated in the Four Corners Blessings, we poured out the Body and Blood of Christ onto the ground, proclaiming healing of the very environment by the sacrifice and life of Christ. We did the same thing at our first Memorial Eucharist at Hope House. We buried the bread and poured out the wine of Christ’s body and blood on the ground to redeem it and take it back from the Devil.

When we did this, we proclaimed Christ’s death and we also proclaimed his transformative life, which renews the very Earth.

Because we responded to Christ’s redemption of sin and death, Hope House is no longer a drug house and place of death, but a place of prayer and life.
This ought to excite us greatly. Death is swallowed up in Life and the Kingdoms of this world have become the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ. Our Response to Christ’s Redemption of the World then, is to reach out in Mission.

So again, we Respond in the four basic areas because Christ Redeems all of our lives. I remind you of one of the definitions of prayer: Our response to God, whether with words or without words, with deeds or without deeds.

Friends, let’s make our lives a prayer to God by responding to God’s grace and mercy in all our actions. By His Grace, let us live out our calling as the People of God, and as All Saints Anglican Church. AMEN.