Sunday Sermon - 1 March
When I was leaving Lakefield College School (LCS), I was often asked what I thought my legacy would be. At old institutions like LCS, there is a lot of talk about legacy. It is something that long-serving staff and long-standing, deeply committed alumni, think about. Honestly, it is not something that I really ever thought or cared about and maybe that’s because I didn’t grow up in the private school world. I wasn’t a teacher at LCS. I served that community, as I hope I serve this community, as a priest and pastor. A servant to, and for, a flock, being as selfless about my service as I can be.
I find myself thinking about this today because of our readings — especially the story of Abraham and then Paul’s words to the Romans.
Both readings press on that quiet question that lives somewhere in all of us: What is our legacy and, more so for us as people of faith, what exactly must we do to receive God’s favour (if anything at all)?
In theological language, we call it the question of justification. Are we made right with God because of what we accomplish, or because of the faith we place in Him? If it is our works that define us, then how much do they finally shape the imprint of our legacy before God?
Paul’s letter to the Romans responds to this question quite clearly, we are justified by faith alone. So what does this mean?
The concept of justification by faith can be pretty complicated, there are year long courses in seminary on the topic, so if you allow me, I’ll try to put it plainly and yes, a little oversimplified.
Justification by faith means that we are made right with God, held in God’s favour, not because we have earned it, not because we have achieved some level of moral perfection by our actions, not because we have done enough good works to tip the scales in our favour leaving some lasting legacy for God — but because we trust in the promise of God.
To be “justified” means to be declared righteous. To be set in “right relationship” with God.
Paul, in Romans 4, puts this in ‘workplace’ terms. He insists that this right relationship does not come as would a wage to an employee. “If you work,” Paul says, “your wages are owed to you.” That’s how employment works. You clock in. You perform. You are paid. But grace is not an earned paycheck for our good deeds. Grace is a gift. Paul goes all the way back to Genesis and reminds us that “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.”
Reckoned. Rewarded. Counted. Credited.
Abraham was counted righteous not because he had an impressive spiritual résume, performing many God-given tasks, but because he trusted God. That’s justification by faith.
It means your standing before God does not depend on whether you did enough. It depends on whether you put your unconditional faith in the One who promises salvation.
Now that may sound like a theological premise but it becomes deeply personal when we begin thinking again about legacy because at some point in the latter years of our life, these questions begin to surface: Was it enough? Did I do enough? Did I give enough? Was I faithful enough? Will what I built endure?
Those are not academic questions. They are human ones. Questions that we ask ourselves to understand our own meaning and place in life - seeking to understand the purpose of our existence before our lives’ end.
These questions bring us to Abraham. In Genesis 12, Abraham is told to leave everything familiar: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house…”
God does not show him the destination. God gives him a promise: “I will make of you a great nation… in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
There is something almost unreasonable and unbelievable about this. Abraham is childless. His future, humanly speaking, is fragile. Yet God speaks of generations. Abraham’s legacy is secured not by his capacity for good works but by faith and trust in God’s promise.
Paul says that trust, that willingness to step into the unknown trusting God, was counted as righteousness. Not perfection. Not performance. But Trust. Which is profoundly comforting (or at least it should be for us). Many faithful Christians — especially those who have spent a lifetime in church — carry a quiet, unspoken anxiety that sounds something like this: I hope I’ve done enough for God.
We don’t always say it out loud. But it’s there. I know I sometimes find myself asking this question as I course through the days of my life and Lent has a way of bringing these questions to our mind’s forefront. Lent strips away our illusions. The ashes remind us we are dust. The disciplines of prayer and fasting remind us we are limited. In Lent, we are boldly confronted with our shortcomings, and it is easy to slide into a kind of spiritual accounting: I’ll pray more. I’ll try harder. I’ll give up chocolate. I’ll improve my score sheet with God.
Paul interrupts that instinct. Righteousness is not an earned wage for good behaviour. It is a gift. Freely given. Inheritance resting on promise.
While I was thinking about this throughout the week, I was reminded of that wonderful book by Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie. Morrie Schwartz, a self-proclaimed agnostic, as many of you who read the book may remember, was dying of ALS. Week by week, his body failed him. He lost independence. He lost control. He lost strength. Yet in those final months, he was not scrambling to secure his reputation. He wasn’t listing accomplishments. He wasn’t polishing and seeking to promote his legacy. He was talking about love.
In the afterward, Mitch writes about his mentor’s legacy. He does not say he misses Morrie’s brilliance, or his academic reputation, or the long list of professional accomplishments. Instead, he writes: “People often ask what I miss about Morrie. I miss that belief in humanity. I miss the eyes that could view life so encouragingly. And I miss that laugh. I really do.”
That is striking. What endured was not what Morrie produced. It was who he was. It was the faith he carried about life, about love, about human goodness. Morrie, the agnostic, leaned deeply into spiritual reflection as he approached death, leaving Mitch with this enduring line: “Learn how to die, and you learn how to live.”
In many ways, that is precisely Paul’s point about justification by faith. What finally defines us before God is not the record of our achievements, but the posture of our trust. Not what we accumulate, but what we entrust. Legacy, in the end, is not built by works — it is received through faith.
Morrie could not keep his body. He could not keep his life indefinitely but he could trust that love endures which, coincidentally enough, also resonates deeply with our Psalm for today: “The Lord shall keep you.”
We cannot keep everything. But we are kept. That is justification by faith lived out emotionally. It is the shift from: “I must secure my legacy,” to “I entrust my life to God.”
Now let’s be honest. For many of us, legacy feels very concrete. Books written, names on plaques and buildings. It is tangible, lasting evidence that we lived a life that mattered. It’s children and grandchildren. It’s the parish we’ve served. It’s the community we’ve built. It’s the quiet acts of faithfulness no one else saw. It’s how we will be remembered.
Yet sometimes we wonder: Will it last? Will it matter, you know - generations from now, in history? Was it enough?
Abraham never saw the fullness of the promise. He did not see “all the families of the earth” blessed. He trusted it. Paul says that trust — that relinquishing of control — is what God counts as righteousness. Which means this: Your life with God is not finally measured by your output, your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators as it is known in the corporate world).
Your life with God rests in the loving hands of relationship - we are held by God’s divine promise. Your legacy before God does not depend on whether you abided by every church rule or checked every spiritual box. It depends on whether you trusted and even that trust, we must admit, is often fragile. Sometimes our relationship with God feels distant or waning. Sometimes it feels uncertain or shaky. But the object of our faith is not fragile. The object of our faith is an immovable force, a rock. The object of our faith is God and God’s promise.
God is faithful. The God who “gives life to the dead,” Paul says. The God who calls into existence what does not yet exist. The God who took Abraham’s barrenness and made a nation. The God who raised Jesus from the grave. The God that secures what we cannot secure, our salvation.
So perhaps Lent invites us not to try harder to build a better legacy. Perhaps it invites us to loosen our grip. To entrust our children to God. To entrust this parish to God. To entrust unfinished business to God. To entrust even our own mortality to God.
Justification by faith means we do not stand before God presenting our accomplishments. We stand before God trusting Christ and because Christ is enough, we do not have to prove that we are. That frees us. It frees us to love without anxiety. To serve without keeping score. To release what we cannot control. To give ourselves a break when we make mistakes and to forgive others for theirs.
Abraham walked into the unknown — not with a résumé, but with a promise. Morrie faced death — not clinging to accomplishments, but trusting that love is stronger than the grave. We walk this Lenten road — not performing for God, not tallying spiritual achievements — but trusting that grace, not effort, secures our future.
Paul tells us Abraham’s faith was counted as righteousness. Not earned. Not achieved. But counted. Received. Gifted. That means our legacy is not finally the sum of what we built, fixed, earned, or managed. Our legacy is that we trusted. We trusted the promise when we could not see the outcome. We trusted grace when we could not measure our worth. We trusted Christ when everything else was being stripped away.
In that trust we discover something extraordinary — that serving this God, walking by faith with this God, is not bondage but freedom. As our Prayer Book reminds us, He is the One “whose service is perfect freedom.”
And that is the enduring legacy that tells us our lives matter. Not because of what we achieved, but because of the One in whom we trusted. It is by our faith and our faith alone that we are justified. For this we give thanks.
Amen.