Treasure in Earthen Vessels: Homilies about God’s Good News in the Lives of Real People Like You and Me

By Joseph Mark Vought

What could the following people have in common: a member of the Hitler Youth; a young couple pregnant before marriage; a woman and a chaplain in an ICU; a bride pouring communion wine all over her gown; a long-haul trucker baptized in a birdbath; a college kid arrested for being disorderly; and a Holocaust survivor meeting his rescuer after sixty-five years?
Saint Paul would make the list. Writing after his conversion, Paul explains, "For I am the least of the apostles because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain" (1 Cor 15:9-10). This good news of God is the treasure ordinary Christians have proclaimed and shared throughout history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Dec 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781666790283

Joseph Mark Vought

A native of Pennsylvania, Joseph Mark Vought received an MDiv from The Lutheran Seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Ordained in 1983, he served Lutheran congregations in Baltimore, Maryland. and Richmond, Virginia. where he was a chaplain on Virginia's death row. He served Muhlenberg Lutheran of Harrisonburg, Virginia, and the campus ministry at James Madison University. In 2008 he was called to Community Lutheran, Sterling, Virginia, and retired from ministry in 2019. He currently serves as chaplain at the National Cathedral one day a month preaching and presiding at Holy Eucharist.

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Introduction

Since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart . . . For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake . . . But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. (2 Cor 4:1–10)¹

Paul of Tarsus was a most unlikely convert to the good news of Jesus Christ. Writing to the church at Corinth, circa 53 AD, some years after his confrontation on the Damascus Road and commissioning by the risen Christ, Paul explains, For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. (1 Cor 15:9–10) Paul realized salvation was no longer a matter of being righteous before God but trusting God’s love, the forgiveness of sins, and the promise of salvation. As Paul would say, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God. (Eph 2:8) This is the good news of Jesus that Paul, the apostles, and countless Christians have lived and proclaimed across the history of the church. It is also the good news that is seen, heard, and lived in the daily lives of Christians shared with others. C.S. Lewis said, People are mirrors, or ‘carriers’ of Christ to other people . . . This ‘good infection’ can be carried by those who have not got it themselves. Usually, it is those who know Him that bring Him to others. That is why the whole body of Christians showing Him to one another is so important.²

I am a Christian in no small part because of the love and nurture of parents who brought me as an infant to the church for Holy Baptism. Having been raised in a pastor’s family, I resisted the idea of ever becoming a pastor myself. God has a sense of humor and after thirty-six years in ordained ministry in four parish settings, hospice ministry, prison ministry, and chaplaincy at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, I am humbled and honored by the call. All along the way, family, friends, parishioners, unlikely saints, and many others have shared the treasure of Christ and the Gospel with me in their lives and witness. The following homilies and sermons feature a story or illustration from the lives of real people I’ve been privileged to know, or know of, all of them earthen vessels who have carried the treasure of the Gospel. Some names have been changed to protect the innocent. I am grateful for all of them.

Rev. Joseph M. Vought

1

. All Scripture citations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, Copyright

1989

, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America.

2

. The Business of Heaven, Daily Readings from C.S. Lewis, p.

306

Hooper, Walter ed Fount Paperbacks.

4

th Impression,

1987

.

Hitler Youth turned Lutheran Pastor

Easter Season/April 10, 2016/Community Lutheran Church

John 21:1–19; Acts 9:1–20

Easter was a day of surprise for the women who thought they knew what life and death was all about. Easter is rebirth and a new creation. It’s about God who brings life out of death, joy from sadness, love where there was hatred, and works totally contrary to our human expectations and assumptions. But let’s be honest, we are more at home with our own experiences or our own ideas of what we think is true. How often have we closed ourselves off to any idea that God could do a new thing? How often have we thought we knew better? Peter, who always thought he knew more than he really did, looked into the empty tomb on Easter day and then went home. Today in our Gospel he says to his fellow disciples, I am going fishing, as if to say, This Jesus whom we followed must have been a dream . . . too good to be true. Look what happens: Jesus, the risen Lord, meets Peter like he did on that first day by the lakeshore. He is caught again by Jesus who is cooking fish on a charcoal fire, just like the charcoal fire where Peter warmed himself in the courtyard of the high priest when he denied Jesus three times. Peter is confronted by Jesus and then forgiven. He experiences grace and is called again to preach forgiveness and the good news to others.

The other Easter story before us is the story of Paul. There is a before and after quality about his life. I mean he had a resume: If anyone has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. (Phil 3:4–7) I don’t know which is more amazing: that God chose a man like Paul to become the greatest of all apostles, or that God moved a disciple named Ananias to put aside his fear and welcome a murderer. For Ananias to learn about Saul and be asked to welcome him would be like Pope Francis receiving El Chapo Guzman. Jesus confronts zealous Saul, knocks him down, and speaks, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. (Acts 9:5) Like Peter, Paul must be confronted with his lack of faith, struck blind, and then be led and fed, like a baby to have hands laid-on, be baptized by Ananias, and raised up to be God’s new creation. The term conversion doesn’t do it justice. For Paul, like Peter, it must have been like dying and rising, but that’s how Easter happens when faith overcomes fear and God brings life out of death. God does it; we don’t.

My own life and vocation were influenced by a European pastor named Eric Gritsch, born in Austria and raised as Hitler came to power. His father, a Lutheran pastor, worked for the resistance against Hitler and when discovered, was sent to a labor camp and died there. Eric was then pressed into the Hitler Youth and became a leader of a Werewolf pack of boys who did guerilla warfare. Toward the end of the war, Eric learned they were facing sixteen thousand Russian soldiers on the Eastern Front. He gave the order to desert and told his boys, I will no longer give my life to the insanity of a man named Hitler. He buried his Nazi uniform, stole farm clothes, and walked into the Russian lines, passing himself off as a refugee. After the war, Eric went to Vienna where he studied with Victor Frankl, a Jew who survived the Holocaust. Like Ananias and Paul, the Jewish survivor