|
| |
The sermon for December 14 was based on Matthew 11:2-10.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ. Amen.
Our Gospel begins with John the Baptist asking Jesus whether or
not He is actually the Messiah. John, of course, has, for months, been telling
everyone within earshot that Jesus was, indeed the Messiah, and now, he seems to
have some doubts. A lot of us, when we read this text feel a little embarrassed
for John. We think of him as having, for a moment, given in to whatever
spiritual weakness makes St. Thomas forever, in our minds, Doubting Thomas.
We're tempted to invent excuses for his question. We might suggest that John
didn't really have any doubts. He simply wanted to create an opportunity for his
disciples to personally hear Jesus proclaim Himself. But there is no reason at
all to think that John wanted anything other than for Jesus to answer his very
real and very urgent question. Some might be embarrassed by John's insecurity
but I, for one, find it a great comfort. If the greatest of all the prophets
needs some reassurance then I, a complete nobody, don't feel quite so bad.
I don't waste any of my time wondering whether John the Baptist had
doubts about Jesus. He was a preacher and a sinner just like me and I can tell
you with absolute certainty that he had doubts. There have been a lot of days
already in my ministry that have seen me sitting by myself wonder what in the
world I was doing, what could possibly be the point. Whenever I've had to turn
people I love away from the altar, when I have had to condemn sins I don't
personally find offensive or forgive sins which I find especially disgusting I
have very often wondered whether or not the work I have been given to do might
not be some kind of spiritual wild goose chase, born of a dyspeptic personality
and a misreading of the owlier bits of Scripture.
I have wondered whether the God for whom I have endured so much
heart ache, and at whose command I have caused so much pain, really exists. I
have wondered if my life might not have been, thus far, misspent. It's usually
when my back's up against the cross that I begin to feel this way and that takes
us right to John the Baptist. When John had heard IN PRISON about the works of
Christ he sent... We all, I think, know how John's prison term ended. He had his
head cut off and given as a gift to a particularly skilled dancing girl.
(There's an image to help keep your holiday gift giving in check!) John's back
was right up against the cross, indeed, when he sent his disciples to Jesus. But
what really fascinates me is the dynamic of the conversation that takes place
between John and Jesus. John asks Jesus a question about Jesus, Are You the
Coming One? but it's really a question about himself, "Have I wasted my
life and must I now endure this imprisonment for no reason?" All our doubts
about God spring from problems we have with ourselves, and we'll come back to
this in a minute. Jesus, for His part, answers the question John asks. "Yes
I am the Messiah. I am fulfilling all the prophecies, even your
prophesies." But then he answers the question John doesn't ask, by telling
John about John. "No, you are not wasting your life. Your death will not be
meaningless and you are, truly, my prophet." This is a very interesting and
important and comforting conversation. Jesus alone can properly introduce us to
ourselves.
Sitting in his prison cell, waiting for his head to be cut off and
exchanged as a lurid gift among tawdry people, John the Baptist, the great and
unshakeable preacher of repentance must have felt pretty insignificant. His
ministry must have seemed like a fluke, a flash in the pan, a fad. His devotion
to the Word of God preached in all its glory and purity must have seemed like a
waste of effort, if not to himself, then most certainly to people who discussed
around their dinner tables in tones both disappointed and disapproving, his
unfortunate fall from grace. That kind of talk is a wound to the heart from
which no prophet, no preacher, no pastor ever fully recovers. And as he sat
there in squalid misery contemplating his own fate and listening, if even in his
own imagination, to the jeers of those who once flocked to his preaching, he
came to recognize his own insignificance. The truth of his own words hit him
with their fullest force. He really wasn't worthy to untie the sandals of the
Messiah after all. One thing leads to another and the belittled prophet begins
to suspect that God is too big to care about little people like himself. Maybe
you feel small too. Maybe you have worked hard for many years only to find that
employers don't value duty and loyalty the way the used to, or the way you
thought they did. Maybe you feel small because you stay at home with your
children and the world says that the only way to be useful is to put your skills
to work in the marketplace, to get a job, to make money, to be liberated. You
might, upon contemplating your apparent insignificance, come to the conclusion
that God is for priests and philosophers and for people with dramatic and
important problems. God too busy with people upon whose shoulders rests the
weight of the world to be bothered with your cancer or your sorrows. Then again,
maybe you like it that way. Maybe you think your so small and unimportant that
you can slip in under God's radar, so to speak. He's so concerned with genocide
and famine that he won't even notice your gossip or dishonesty or disloyalty.
He's too busy saving the souls aboriginal savages in some dark jungle to care
about the way you neglect His doctrine and make up your own minds about what's
right and wrong. Whether or not you like being to small for God to notice, the
end result is that you doubt what the Church has always told you about Him and
you wonder if the whole Faith might not be one colossal house of cards.
When John came to Jesus with these kinds of anxieties, Jesus told
him to pay attention to what he had seen and heard. To be just a flippant, it's
as if Jesus said to John, If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck and quacks
like a duck, it must be a duck. So what does He say to those of us who feel to
small to be taken notice of? He says that there is no sin so small that he won't
violently condemn it. I direct you to 2 Samuel 6 where we find that a man named
Uzzah, seeing the oxen bearing the Ark of Covenant stumble reaches out to keep
the ark from falling to the ground. God had forbidden anyone to touch the ark
without his permission and He struck down Uzzah on the spot. God killed a man
for what amounted to a reflex action. Do not be tricked into thinking that you
can slip in under God's radar. But the flip side of that admonition comes in
Luke 12:24. Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap, which have
neither storehouse nor barn; and God feeds them. Of how much more value are you
than the birds? God says to you this morning that while you may be insignificant
to the boss or the president or, God forbid, the priest, you are precious to
Him, worth the sacrifice of Son, worth the anguish of the Cross itself.
The again, you may not feel insignificant. You might feel just the
opposite. You may feel as if God's eyes never left you, as if He scrutinized
your every deed, being alternately horrified and disgusted at your behavior.
After all, John didn't doubt that there was a God, just that God could possibly
be the familiar man who came to Him at the Jordan. John was a sinner too and we
sinners doubt Jesus. We see Him smiling at us and reaching out to us,
sacrificing Himself for us and we have a hard time believing that its true. It
is so much easier to believe in a vengeful God, a God who does noting but strike
down Uzzahs and punish sinners. We get sick or overwhelmed and we say to
ourselves, Yep, that's the hand of God alright, hurling misery down on those
whom He despises. I must be a real problem for him to send me so much trouble. I
wonder what I should do about it? Maybe I should go to one of those churches
that's always giving instructions about how to behave, that will provide me with
a recipe or method for getting holy. Maybe I should just give up and accept the
fact that I'm going hell, make the most of the time I have left and die in blaze
of iniquity.
Once again Jesus makes us to look about us. He's come to forgive
our sins. He sends preachers and they do preach the Law but they also always
preach the Gospel, the forgiveness of sins by grace through faith for Jesus'
sake alone. He gives us Holy Baptism for the remission of our sins. He gives us
His own flesh and blood to eat and drink in the Sacrament of the Altar for the
remission of our sins. He offers us Pastoral Absolution and the reassurance of
His mercy in Holy Scripture. Everything about Christ and His Church is bent
toward the forgiveness of sins. There is no Christian way to damn someone. There
is no sacrament of condemnation. We withhold the sacrament from those who deny
the faith or their need for grace but that isn't at all the same as damning
them. Everything the Church does is about forgiveness and repentance, about
mercy and grace. Maybe you feel guilty about the kind of husband or wife you've
been. Maybe you know that you could have done better by your children or your
parents or your brothers or sisters. Whatever your sin, Jesus comes to remove
your guilt. He comes to forgive you and if He forgives you, there can be no
reason for you not to forgive yourself. And even if you are just cussedly
determined to hold a grudge against yourself, Jesus won't let you. He will send
His Pastors out to find you and preach the good news to you and grind you down
the offer of absolution until you begin to see yourself the way He sees you.
Which is just what He did for John the Baptist in today's Gospel.
Do you begin to see the pattern? We feel insignificant and begin to
doubt that God even takes notice of us. Jesus assures us that we are precious to
Him and we begin to recognize our own significance. We feel guilty and worry
that God won't forgive us. Jesus bends all the power of heaven and earth, quite
literally, to forgive our sins and we begin to forgive ourselves. We hunger for
excellence and fear that God will reject our best efforts at serving in His
kingdom. He assures us that it is His work that matters and not our own. The
more we see Him at work on our behalf, blessing us providing for us, loving us,
protecting us, doing for us what we should have done ourselves, the more we love
Him and the more we delight in the service we are moved to render despite its
inevitable imperfection. We are abused by our fellow men and taken advantage of
by our neighbors and we begin to suspect that God isn't very good after all. He
comes to us, not just with sunshine and flowers but on the cross, with His arms
outstretched, nailed to the tree and in the holy, innocent, bitter suffering and
death of God's beloved Son we see His grace toward us and find ourselves
inexplicably capable of forgiving those who use us poorly. We play up our
sicknesses and milk our misfortunes and we begin to wonder if God Himself might
not be as easily fooled as our neighbors by our various and manifold forms of
malingering. God comes to us with the assurance that He is not mocked. He writes
His law on our hearts and chains us to our consciences. The hypochondriac might
make himself sick by worrying about whether or not people know he lying but
He'll never fool God. By sending us doctor after doctor and putting in our paths
those men and women are truly ill and yet say nary a word about it He leaves us
no choice but to give up the charade, set aside the pretense and confess our
pitiful neediness. In confessing our hypocrisy or malingering we are set free to
grow and struggle and stretch right out in the open. It's guilt and fear that
make us invent excuses for why we don't render more or better service to our
fellow men. Once that guilt goes away we are free to practice and fail and try
something new without having to make excuses or blame our bodies.
Here is the pattern one more time. You know something wicked and
unfortunate about yourself which, in the course of things, becomes a doubt about
God. God answers your doubt with clear and direct Words and deeds which, in the
course of things, teaches you something wonderful and inspiring about yourself.
We are getting ready to celebrate the birth of Jesus, the face to
face meeting of God and mankind. As we prepare for Christmas we reflect on our
sins and examine our lives, much as John the Baptist must have been doing in the
final days of his life.
And like him we find ourselves rejoicing in the great and
miraculous grace of God. God became John the Baptist's cousin to save him from
himself. He became a man like us to save us from ourselves. Now that our sins
are forgiven, now that our fears are allayed and our questions are answered we
are emboldened and confident. Even as the devil the world and our own flesh
conspire to deal us the death blow, we like St. Stephen, see heaven open wide
and the glorious expanse of a life with God spread out before us. There is no
reason that the time we have left in this world cannot be full of big doings and
grand aspirations. There is no reason that we cannot be happy with our lot and
content with our lives. We will always be at war with the world and we will
always be at peace with God. There is no reason that we cannot thrive in the
fight with such a champion on our side. The mood of the season is lifted for the
day, the color is rose instead of violet and God Himself sets aside our quarrels
and our questions and invites us to rejoice with Him and in Him. Amen.
The Peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds
in Christ Jesus. Amen.
|
