I.N.I.
A sermon to be preached at Our Savior Lutheran Church, Arlington, Virginia on the Sunday after Christmas, 27 December 2009, and based on the Gospel for the day, St. Luke 2:22-40, but especially verses 29-32, the Nunc Dimittis of Simeon
Grace, mercy, and peace be yours in Christ Jesus our Lord,
[text]
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
What a special day this is! And what a special day it was when Mary and Joseph brought their infant son to the Temple in Jerusalem!
Luke wraps together the two events of the purification of Mary and the Presentation of Jesus. The first was required in the Old Testament 40 days after a boy was born (and 80 days after a girl was born), wherein a sacrifice was to be brought in order to make the new mother ritually clean again. The latter also came from the Old Testament command that a first-born son was to be considered holy to the Lord; although, they could be redeemed – bought back, if you will – from God in order to be of service in some other life's work besides the priesthood.
The sacrifice that Joseph and Mary bring is the two turtledoves sacrifice of a poor couple that could not afford the purchase of a lamb, which would have been the other acceptable alternative. (Although, if you think about it, they were also bringing a spotless, unblemished Lamb with them, One Who would be the most acceptable sacrifice ever.) And, interestingly (although maybe one shouldn't make too much of it) Luke doesn't mention the offering required to 'buy back' a first-born son, which could mean that Luke intends his readers to understand that Jesus remained dedicated to God's service – which, of course, He did.
This Temple in Jerusalem was quite different from today's Christian churches. There was something going on every day of the week at the Temple. There was a lot of noise. There was confusion. There would have been enough smells to overpower a lot of us here. There were a lot of people. Without being profane, I think we might imagine it something like a crowded shopping mall.
While the Holy Family was there at the Temple, a couple people came to them out of the hustle and bustle. These two were 'regulars,' people who were probably considered to be just part of the scenery by many of the other Temple-goers because they were always there at the Temple. They met Jesus and His parents, and they said some remarkable things. I want to focus our attention on one of those people and one of the things he said.
Simeon was a man who “was just and devout, waiting for the Consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him.” He's usually pictured as a senior citizen, but the text doesn't really speak directly to his age, as it does to Anna's.
It's interesting that despite how just and devout he was, despite how religious, spiritual, and pious he was, Simeon still had to wait for the Consolation of Israel. Neither his devotion, nor his spirituality could bring this about. Both Simeon as an individual man, and Israel as the people of God, had to wait for consolation, for the Consolation (capital C), for the One who could and would console the nation and its individuals. The Christmas story underlines for us just how wrong it is for people to hope that their own actions will bring about lasting peace in their hearts and lives. There are several individuals in the story who are specifically described as people focused on following the Law, yet who all needed a Savior. Here again, Simeon is one of them. He was concerned about following all the rules and regulations, but he knew that none of it was enough to gain him everlasting peace. Simeon knew, as we all know deep in our hearts, that forgiveness and peace only come from God. There is only One who can and does soothe our stress, alleviate our grief, and truly comfort us. That one is our loving God.
Simeon recognizes Jesus as the One he has been waiting for. How did he do that? The only way it could have been was that, as Luke tells us, “the Holy Spirit was with him.”
And there again, we have a clear Scripture telling us that the only way people come to have Jesus in their hearts is through the gift of the Holy Spirit who brings us to faith. Others there in the Temple were just. Others were devout. Others were religious. But the Holy Spirit was with Simeon, and Simeon was the one who recognized Jesus for Who He really is. Simeon was the one who took Jesus into his arms. Today our world is filled with people who think that they can somehow grab the benefits of knowing Jesus all on their own, that they can gain the peace that passes all understanding, or the deep joy, or the hope for the future all on their own. But Simeon teaches us that recognizing and embracing Jesus comes only when the Holy Spirit is upon us, as He is when we hear the Word of God and come to faith, when we experience the means of grace.
Upon holding Jesus, Simeon broke into a blessing that we think of as a song (maybe he sang it, too, we don't know). Those of us in liturgical Christian churches sing this “Nunc Dimittis” after we receive Holy Communion: “Lord, now let your servant go in peace....” Let's look at the words of that song for a few minutes this morning.
That opening line is one of the more beautiful lines in the Bible. “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, According to your word.” Well how else and when else would one of God's servants be able to die in peace? When God's word is fulfilled, His promises are all made good. Simeon is recognizing that all of the Lord's promises to the world up to that time especially through the prophets of Israel pointed to Jesus. On a personal level, Simeon may have had a special assurance from God that he would not die until he saw the fulfillment of those Old Testament promises. He'd hung on. He'd spent time in the Temple. He'd outlived many of his family and friends, some of whom had also been waiting expectantly for the coming of the Messiah. And yet the Lord delayed His coming. So Simeon did not give up, but waited patiently and expectantly for Jesus' first coming, in the same way that you and I wait for His second coming.
This side of the first Christmas, all the Lord's promises still point to Jesus, you see. Now they point us toward that second coming when we will all be able to depart in peace at the fulfillment of God's word. As faithful followers, as Holy Spirit filled Christians, as baptized children of our heavenly Father, we truly do have the chance to sing Simeon's song as our own song. We truly are ready to depart this world in peace because we know what awaits us on the other side of death. We can depart in peace because God fulfills His word of forgiveness for our sins.
Simeon explains next how it is that he is ready to die. He says “For my eyes have seen Your salvation, Which you have prepared before the face of all peoples.” This phrase fleshes out what the first line pointed toward. In case you didn't get what word it is that has been fulfilled, Simeon tells us that it was the word about the sending of the One who would bring salvation, the One Who would be salvation for the world.
It is significant that the most meaningful word for Simeon is the word of salvation. There is no other more meaningful word for any of us. Every person's struggle for meaning and rest is rooted in a yearning for salvation. We know we've messed up. We want to have that fixed.
The salvation which Simeon saw wasn't something reserved for a small segment of society, either. It wasn't something set aside for the especially pious, or the especially righteous; it wasn't a salvation reserved for those who were especially generous or giving; and it really wasn't a salvation reserved only for the descendants of Abraham who made up the people of Israel. This salvation had been prepared before the face of all peoples, male and female, slave and free, Jew and Gentile. Everyone on earth needs God reaching into history to save us. Everyone gets that salvation offered to them.
The last phrase of Simeon's song specifies what he meant by “before the face of all peoples”. Simeon sings, “A light to bring revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.” Both Jew and Gentile, in other words. Everyone. God so loves the whole world that he sent his only-begotten Son.
So one of the miracles of this season is the clear teaching that Jesus is not only the long-awaited Messiah of the Jews, promised by God through the prophets for generations, but that Jesus is also the long-awaited Messiah of the Gentiles, the Savior of the whole world.
The next verse in the Gospel tells us that Joseph and Mary “marveled at those things which were spoken of Him.” Most parents have people say nice things about their children, but these words were really over the top in a way. These parents had heard angelic messages about the special role this child would have, but perhaps even they had not understood until now just how widespread, how earth-shaking, how history-making Jesus would be. “A light to bring revelation to the Gentiles.” Well, clearly the Gentiles have been sitting in darkness, the darkness of sin without hearing a promise of salvation. Not that many years in the future, though, Peter and Paul would be preaching God's word of forgiveness to Gentile people. It was happening. The light of the world was spreading throughout the world.
And he would also be “the glory of your people Israel.” This little child would somehow become the greatest person in a nation that had had many great people in it. As the One who embodied all the prophecies and promises of Israel going back to the Garden of Eden, this Child was destined for clear greatness. Maybe wrapped in his baby clothes there in the Temple that day He didn't look all that different from other babies begin brought in by their parents. How would anyone have known but by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? Yet the Spirit inspired, and Simeon spoke, and Joseph and Mary had the chance to marvel at what was spoken. They could take those words with them through the years of raising Jesus. Here was a special child. Here was the ultimate Child of promise. He was the Child of the real, the most important promise.
His life, his death, his resurrection would make all the difference in the world to the world. He was the Savior. He was the glory of his people, he was the light to the Gentiles. He brought salvation to all people. Because of Jesus, all people now have the chance to depart from this world in peace.
You and I can be ready at a moment's notice to make this departure. Our Savior has come. He was born in Bethlehem so many years ago. He died in our places on the cross. He rose from the dead as proof of God's victory over sin, death, and the Devil. We celebrate Christmas now in remembrance of our Savior's first coming. And with Simeon we look forward to Jesus' second coming and to 'departing this life in peace according to His Word; for our eyes have seen His Salvation, which He has prepared before the face of all peoples, a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles, And a glory to His people Israel.' Amen.
S.D.G.
(which blog includes stuff about hiking, backpacking, The Appalachian Trail, and The Long Trail, as well random photos, jottings, scribblings, scraps of writing, miscellanea, facetiae, addresses, sermons, essays, journal entries, notes, memoranda, und so weiter. Sort of an online personal archive.)
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Great Expectations and Greater Ones
I.N.I.
A sermon to be preached at St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Columbia, Pennsylvania on Wednesday 9 December 2009 and based on the assigned Gospel text for the evening: St. Luke 1:12-15a, 18, 24-25, 57 to carry the theme of Elizabeth personifying Advent Expectation.
Grace, mercy, and peace be yours in Christ Jesus our Lord.
[text]
Dear Friends in Christ,
“Elizabeth is expecting.” That news flashed through a certain Judean town years ago, we can be sure. But Elizabeth was expecting long before she became pregnant. We can guess at some of Elizabeth's expectations, and be fairly certain of others.
I. Elizabeth's Expectations (Known and Conjectured)
For example, while her husband Zechariah had been off in Jerusalem, we can guess that she was expecting him to come home brimming with news and stories. She was also likely expecting that she would spend her remaining years as a doting aunt or as a babysitting substitute grandmother for children in her village. Maybe she was even expecting that God would actually answer her prayers over the years and somehow send her a child of her own despite her advanced years.
And like other faithful believers over the years, Elizabeth had been expecting the Lord to fulfill His ancient promises and to send a Messiah to Israel.
There's a good chance that Elizabeth expected something from the Lord in response to the way she had been “righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord” (Lk. 1:6). That would really only be natural, wouldn't it? She was keeping up her side of the relationship. When was God going to step in and do something for her in return? It wasn't as if Elizabeth was a 'nobody' after all. She was a descendant of Aaron, the brother of Moses of old and the progenitor of Israel's priests. She had married a priest. Her family connections, in other words, were pretty solid.
And despite the fact that there were so very many laws to keep, she and her husband had really exercised a great deal of piety and even holiness by keeping a very kosher household, by strictly maintaining the Sabbath, by observing the festivals like Passover. They had sacrificed the required sacrifices. They had prayed the necessary prayers. They had worshiped. They had loved the Lord with all their heart, soul, and mind. They had loved their neighbors, too.
Yet while Elizabeth had rejoiced in the Lord, and again I say rejoiced, there was that one thing missing. So much of her people's culture focused on the promise of children, and she had none. At one level, children were the Social Security system of their world – much like they are in poor cultures of today's world: when people aged beyond being able to work for their living, then they expected that their children would care for them as they had for their own parents. But at another level, children were viewed as a blessing from the Lord, as kind of tangible evidence of His love, and certainly as a way that the faith of Israel could grow.
There were examples in the Scriptures that Elizabeth knew, examples of women whose aged or barren wombs had finally been blessed by children of promise. Just two are included in our lessons this evening. Out Old Testament lesson recalls Rachel giving birth to Joseph who would later save his whole family by gathering them into his household in Egypt during a terrible famine. Our New Testament lesson recalls Sarah, Rachel's grandmother-in-law, who gave birth to her son Isaac when she and Abraham were “as good as dead,” both being in the neighborhood of 100 years old. I wouldn't be surprised if Elizabeth knew their stories by heart and included them in her prayers. She and Zechariah had prayed for a child. She knew that being able to pass on her faith in God to her own children would be a way of making her own contribution to the growth of the Lord's family.
Well, all that about children was true. But Elizabeth was mistaken if she ever expected that her obedience to the Law of God was going to get her the child she wanted. As right as she was, Elizabeth was wrong if she ever thought that living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord would somehow prove her worthiness to God, as if she could really be perfect and 100% blameless.
Elizabeth's expectations while Zechariah was serving at the Temple in Jerusalem – if they were realistic – were defined by the boundaries of her imperfection, her sin before the Lord, that meant she would never be able to keep God's Law completely.
II. Our Expectations Before We Know Christ
You and I can and do have our own expectations, don't we? Our expectations can be all over the map, too. We can expect that if we out in an honest day's work, we will get a a full day's pay. We can expect that when we do achieve retirement age, we will be somewhat taken care of. We can expect that when we are sick or injured that we can get help from doctors and the health care system.
We may be expecting all sorts of other things. We may be expecting things from our families. We may be expecting things from our friends, from our neighbors, even from strangers.
And maybe we expect things from God. There are a lot of people in today's world who have some sort of vague expectation that 'God helps those who help themselves.' This is not a phrase from the Bible, though, and does not express our Christian faith. But we hear a lot about people – and maybe you are or were one of them – who expect that if we treat other people well, and do our best, and generally try to be nice to others, well then God will pretty much have to let us into Heaven after we die. You've all seen the cartoon image of St. Peter guarding the gate of Heaven with a long list of who has been naughty and nice. The world before Jesus Christ sees things this way, as if God were a grandfatherly Santa Claus, always genial, always eager to overlook slips by his grandchildren, and always dropping eternal presents on everybody because – despite the talk – nobody ever really expects Santa to skip a house where children misbehave.
So we expect God to play fair. We do our best. We come as close as we can to “ living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord” and surely the Lord will bless us. Won't He?
Well, if we're really honest with ourselves, we know He won't. God wants perfection. And perfection means not slipping even once. It means scoring a perfect “10” every time. It means getting straight A's every semester every year for the rest of our lives. And that's just not going to happen.
That means that what we really should expect from God is His disappointment with us, His correction, and His hand of punishment. THAT is only fair. Those have always been the rules of the game. Everybody, deep in their hearts, realizes that, too.
III. Our Expectations Once We Know Christ
Here's where Elizabeth of old – old Elizabeth of old – can continue to teach you and me about the Lord. What Elizabeth was expecting can be what we are expecting, too.
Because Elizabeth was expecting her Savior. Her expectation was met when Mary visited six months later. Part of what she said to Mary was to ask “why has this happened to me that the mother of my Lord comes to me?” She could tell because her unborn son, John the Baptiser, “leaped for joy” in her womb when Mary greeted her. John was beginning his own ministry of announcing the coming of the Savior. And Elizabeth rejoiced.
So, too, do we rejoice at the coming of our Savior. With eager expectation we look forward to celebrating Christmas once again. On December 25th we start our annual 12 day celebration of Jesus' birth. We always expect the best of this time of year. And it's all tied up in the coming of Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem, born our King, and born our Redeemer.
And that is precisely why you and I look forward to the Second Coming with the same eager expectation. People who have no Savior have no hope for the future. They have no way to save themselves from the punishment for their sins. They have no assurance that things will be all right for them when they die. Maybe they hope so. But they don't know.
We who are followers of Jesus, however, have a sure and certain promise that we have a good future before us. We don't have to wonder whether we've done enough good deeds to get past the gatekeeper of Heaven. We don't need to tremble because maybe some of the things we've done were just bad enough to keep out of everlasting joy. You and I know we haven't done enough good, and that we've done way too much bad. But we also know this: we know that Jesus Christ, true God and true Man, did absolutely everything to satisfy God on our behalves. So we look forward to the Second Coming of Jesus, we look forward to judgment day, we look forward to our deaths because they are the door that takes us into our eternal rest, our eternal peace, our eternal joy.
We should expect nothing if we rely on our own merits or worthiness. But God's gracious gifts exceed our human expectations. Instead of anger, we find grace. Instead of rejection, we find love and acceptance. Instead of punishment, we receive Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God. This God-with-us, this Immanuel, becomes our Savior. He took our sin and suffering and death, aced them all in our place before we were even born, and gave us his life and holiness to cover us.
This Advent we all have expectations. We may be expecting presents. We may be expecting greeting cards. We may be expecting family get-togethers or visits from friends. We could be expecting special meals and cookies and fruit cake. I can't promise that any of those expectations will be fulfilled.
This Advent, we who have been made one with Jesus through our Baptism into his death and resurrection have other expectations as well. We are expecting God's forgiveness. We are expecting eternal joy. We are expecting to be welcomed into Heaven where the open arms of our loving God will wrap us up in the warmest hug ever. And those expectations we can be absolutely sure will be fulfilled.
May the peace of God that surpasses all human understanding and expectation keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
S.D.G.
A sermon to be preached at St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Columbia, Pennsylvania on Wednesday 9 December 2009 and based on the assigned Gospel text for the evening: St. Luke 1:12-15a, 18, 24-25, 57 to carry the theme of Elizabeth personifying Advent Expectation.
Grace, mercy, and peace be yours in Christ Jesus our Lord.
[text]
Dear Friends in Christ,
“Elizabeth is expecting.” That news flashed through a certain Judean town years ago, we can be sure. But Elizabeth was expecting long before she became pregnant. We can guess at some of Elizabeth's expectations, and be fairly certain of others.
I. Elizabeth's Expectations (Known and Conjectured)
For example, while her husband Zechariah had been off in Jerusalem, we can guess that she was expecting him to come home brimming with news and stories. She was also likely expecting that she would spend her remaining years as a doting aunt or as a babysitting substitute grandmother for children in her village. Maybe she was even expecting that God would actually answer her prayers over the years and somehow send her a child of her own despite her advanced years.
And like other faithful believers over the years, Elizabeth had been expecting the Lord to fulfill His ancient promises and to send a Messiah to Israel.
There's a good chance that Elizabeth expected something from the Lord in response to the way she had been “righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord” (Lk. 1:6). That would really only be natural, wouldn't it? She was keeping up her side of the relationship. When was God going to step in and do something for her in return? It wasn't as if Elizabeth was a 'nobody' after all. She was a descendant of Aaron, the brother of Moses of old and the progenitor of Israel's priests. She had married a priest. Her family connections, in other words, were pretty solid.
And despite the fact that there were so very many laws to keep, she and her husband had really exercised a great deal of piety and even holiness by keeping a very kosher household, by strictly maintaining the Sabbath, by observing the festivals like Passover. They had sacrificed the required sacrifices. They had prayed the necessary prayers. They had worshiped. They had loved the Lord with all their heart, soul, and mind. They had loved their neighbors, too.
Yet while Elizabeth had rejoiced in the Lord, and again I say rejoiced, there was that one thing missing. So much of her people's culture focused on the promise of children, and she had none. At one level, children were the Social Security system of their world – much like they are in poor cultures of today's world: when people aged beyond being able to work for their living, then they expected that their children would care for them as they had for their own parents. But at another level, children were viewed as a blessing from the Lord, as kind of tangible evidence of His love, and certainly as a way that the faith of Israel could grow.
There were examples in the Scriptures that Elizabeth knew, examples of women whose aged or barren wombs had finally been blessed by children of promise. Just two are included in our lessons this evening. Out Old Testament lesson recalls Rachel giving birth to Joseph who would later save his whole family by gathering them into his household in Egypt during a terrible famine. Our New Testament lesson recalls Sarah, Rachel's grandmother-in-law, who gave birth to her son Isaac when she and Abraham were “as good as dead,” both being in the neighborhood of 100 years old. I wouldn't be surprised if Elizabeth knew their stories by heart and included them in her prayers. She and Zechariah had prayed for a child. She knew that being able to pass on her faith in God to her own children would be a way of making her own contribution to the growth of the Lord's family.
Well, all that about children was true. But Elizabeth was mistaken if she ever expected that her obedience to the Law of God was going to get her the child she wanted. As right as she was, Elizabeth was wrong if she ever thought that living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord would somehow prove her worthiness to God, as if she could really be perfect and 100% blameless.
Elizabeth's expectations while Zechariah was serving at the Temple in Jerusalem – if they were realistic – were defined by the boundaries of her imperfection, her sin before the Lord, that meant she would never be able to keep God's Law completely.
II. Our Expectations Before We Know Christ
You and I can and do have our own expectations, don't we? Our expectations can be all over the map, too. We can expect that if we out in an honest day's work, we will get a a full day's pay. We can expect that when we do achieve retirement age, we will be somewhat taken care of. We can expect that when we are sick or injured that we can get help from doctors and the health care system.
We may be expecting all sorts of other things. We may be expecting things from our families. We may be expecting things from our friends, from our neighbors, even from strangers.
And maybe we expect things from God. There are a lot of people in today's world who have some sort of vague expectation that 'God helps those who help themselves.' This is not a phrase from the Bible, though, and does not express our Christian faith. But we hear a lot about people – and maybe you are or were one of them – who expect that if we treat other people well, and do our best, and generally try to be nice to others, well then God will pretty much have to let us into Heaven after we die. You've all seen the cartoon image of St. Peter guarding the gate of Heaven with a long list of who has been naughty and nice. The world before Jesus Christ sees things this way, as if God were a grandfatherly Santa Claus, always genial, always eager to overlook slips by his grandchildren, and always dropping eternal presents on everybody because – despite the talk – nobody ever really expects Santa to skip a house where children misbehave.
So we expect God to play fair. We do our best. We come as close as we can to “ living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord” and surely the Lord will bless us. Won't He?
Well, if we're really honest with ourselves, we know He won't. God wants perfection. And perfection means not slipping even once. It means scoring a perfect “10” every time. It means getting straight A's every semester every year for the rest of our lives. And that's just not going to happen.
That means that what we really should expect from God is His disappointment with us, His correction, and His hand of punishment. THAT is only fair. Those have always been the rules of the game. Everybody, deep in their hearts, realizes that, too.
III. Our Expectations Once We Know Christ
Here's where Elizabeth of old – old Elizabeth of old – can continue to teach you and me about the Lord. What Elizabeth was expecting can be what we are expecting, too.
Because Elizabeth was expecting her Savior. Her expectation was met when Mary visited six months later. Part of what she said to Mary was to ask “why has this happened to me that the mother of my Lord comes to me?” She could tell because her unborn son, John the Baptiser, “leaped for joy” in her womb when Mary greeted her. John was beginning his own ministry of announcing the coming of the Savior. And Elizabeth rejoiced.
So, too, do we rejoice at the coming of our Savior. With eager expectation we look forward to celebrating Christmas once again. On December 25th we start our annual 12 day celebration of Jesus' birth. We always expect the best of this time of year. And it's all tied up in the coming of Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem, born our King, and born our Redeemer.
And that is precisely why you and I look forward to the Second Coming with the same eager expectation. People who have no Savior have no hope for the future. They have no way to save themselves from the punishment for their sins. They have no assurance that things will be all right for them when they die. Maybe they hope so. But they don't know.
We who are followers of Jesus, however, have a sure and certain promise that we have a good future before us. We don't have to wonder whether we've done enough good deeds to get past the gatekeeper of Heaven. We don't need to tremble because maybe some of the things we've done were just bad enough to keep out of everlasting joy. You and I know we haven't done enough good, and that we've done way too much bad. But we also know this: we know that Jesus Christ, true God and true Man, did absolutely everything to satisfy God on our behalves. So we look forward to the Second Coming of Jesus, we look forward to judgment day, we look forward to our deaths because they are the door that takes us into our eternal rest, our eternal peace, our eternal joy.
We should expect nothing if we rely on our own merits or worthiness. But God's gracious gifts exceed our human expectations. Instead of anger, we find grace. Instead of rejection, we find love and acceptance. Instead of punishment, we receive Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God. This God-with-us, this Immanuel, becomes our Savior. He took our sin and suffering and death, aced them all in our place before we were even born, and gave us his life and holiness to cover us.
This Advent we all have expectations. We may be expecting presents. We may be expecting greeting cards. We may be expecting family get-togethers or visits from friends. We could be expecting special meals and cookies and fruit cake. I can't promise that any of those expectations will be fulfilled.
This Advent, we who have been made one with Jesus through our Baptism into his death and resurrection have other expectations as well. We are expecting God's forgiveness. We are expecting eternal joy. We are expecting to be welcomed into Heaven where the open arms of our loving God will wrap us up in the warmest hug ever. And those expectations we can be absolutely sure will be fulfilled.
May the peace of God that surpasses all human understanding and expectation keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
S.D.G.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
The Silence of Listening: Zechariah For Our Time
I.N.I.
A sermon to be preached at St. Paul Lutheran Church, Columbia, Pa. on Wednesday evening, 2 December 2009, the first Wednesday in Advent, and based on the assigned Gospel text for the day: St. Luke 1:5-24a, 57-64, the story of Zechariah.
Grace, mercy, and peace be yours in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
[the text]
Dear Friends in Christ,
Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth were faithful, observant followers of the Law, and they stand in line with other faithful followers of the Lord who were blessed with children of Promise when (like Abraham and Sarah) they were past the usual age of child-bearing or (like Hannah and Elkanah) they were long considered incapable of having children together. God worked miracles with all these couples in order to further the working out of His promise of salvation. Next Wednesday we will ponder Elizabeth's part of the Advent story. Tonight we consider the story of Zechariah the priest, and the silence of Advent. It is primarily his silence, but it can and should be our silence as well.
As a priest, it was Zechariah's honor to be selected one day from among the thousands of priests of God to be the one to approach the altar in the temple at Jerusalem and burn incense while his division was on duty. He was chosen by lot, a method that was intended no doubt to make the selection unbiased, but which also allowed it to be directed by God. And this was certainly one time when God directed the casting of the lots for His own purposes. It was in this way that the Lord got Zechariah off by himself, and had his undivided attention. God sent His angel Gabriel to communicate with His priest.
Despite the fact that – as Luke tells us – both Zechariah and Elizabeth “were upright in the sight of God, observing all the Lord's commandments and regulations blamelessly,” it still came as a shock to Zechariah when the angel appeared there at the right side of the altar. It's the sort of apparition that one might have hoped for. It was the kind of confirmation that someone could even have prayed for. Still, when it happened Zechariah was “startled and gripped with fear.” My guess is that there hadn't been any classes in priest school about how to deal with this sort of event.
The angel's message was that Zechariah should not be afraid, and that his prayer had been heard: he and Elizabeth were to become parents.
And not only that, but what a child this would be! “He will be great in the sight of the Lord” Gabriel says. This child will bring many of the people of Israel back to the Lord. His work will be undertaken in the spirit and power of Elijah. In other words, this was going to be one special boy.
Zechariah was stunned by this announcement. Not quite speechless, he stutters out the question: “How can I be sure of this?” and the explanation: “I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.” In this simple, logical, and understandable question you and I can see that what was lacking in Zechariah's life to that point was not the gift of a child, but the gift of absolute faith. At this point Gabriel introduces himself by name, reviews his angelic credentials (“I stand in the presence of God and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news ... this Gospel.”), and finally gives Zechariah the sign he thinks he needs to confirm Gabriel's good news. Because he “did not believe” Zechariah will take out of the Holy Place in the Temple both the promise of a son, and the sign of silence.
It must have made for an interesting homecoming when Zechariah got home to the hill country of Judea after his time of service at the Temple was up. The people who had been praying in the outer part of the Temple somehow understood that Zechariah had seen a vision inside. So perhaps it wasn't difficult for Elizabeth to understand the same thing. Zechariah, we can imagine, was likely bursting at the seams with the story of his experience, but he was unable to tell Elizabeth. He hadn't even been able to give the people at the Temple the benediction they were expecting, but was only able to keep making signs to them. When he got home, we can suppose he continued making signs to his wife and possibly also wrote short messages to her on the same writing tablet he would later use to name their son. Other than that, though, Zechariah spent the next 9 months in silence.
This is the silence of Advent. It is the silence of patient expectation, the silence of waiting for the fulfillment of the Promise. It is the silence of listening.
Now, some commentators think that Luke is also saying that Zechariah was deaf during this time. They pick out a phrase from the end of the story where the friends and relatives “made signs to [Zechariah] to find out what he would like to name the child.” I'm not so sure about that myself because Gabriel doesn't say anything about deafness. But since deaf people often don't speak out loud very much I can see the neighbors thinking that a speechless Zechariah must also be a non-hearing one. I would rather believe that Zechariah had spent the months of his wife's pregnancy listening.
The first thing Zechariah got the chance to do when exercising his gift of silence was, obviously, to shut his own mouth. Some of us spend an awful lot of time talking, don't we? And those of us who are not talking spend an awful lot of time thinking about what we'll say when we get a chance. Back home from Jerusalem, Zechariah found that he couldn't fill the air with his own words, and that there wasn't any point in planning what to say when he could get a word in edgewise since he couldn't talk anyway. So he was forced to sit back and listen. He listed to Elizabeth, to be sure. And he listened to God.
That is something you and I can learn from. We can spend our lives “observing all the Lord's commandments and regulations blamelessly” but if we don't really listen to what the Lord wants of us, it will really be for naught.
What are some ways we can listen to God?
We can listen with Zechariah to the Word of God. He had the extremely rare privilege and blessing of a direct and personal Word brought from the presence of the Lord by one of His angels. But a vision of an angel is rare in our days. Instead, we hear God's Word to us through the Bible. That's one thing Zechariah would have done during his silent Advent. He would have continued to go to the local synagogue and continued to hear God's word read there at times of worship. Reading the lessons in church is not simply an formal exercise, but is a real chance for us to hear God speaking to each of us.
Zechariah probably also read from God's word on his own, in between services. You and I are able to read God's Word freely whenever we want. We have the gift of printed Bibles available to us, in a variety of understandable translations, Bibles that we can read whenever we want. Like Zechariah did, we can listen to God speak to us in our hearts as we ponder, think about, an meditate on God's Word.
We have many, many opportunities to hear God's Word.
And when we really stop and listen to it, God brings blessings to us through it.
So what sorts of things do we hear? What is the message that the Bible brings to us from the presence of God? At root, it is the same message that Gabriel gave to Zechariah in the Temple.
Listen to it now. God is happy that you – like Zechariah and Elizabeth – have obeyed all his commandments. He is glad that you have observed his regulations blamelessly.
...Or perhaps you haven't reached that level of perfection. Perhaps you haven't been absolutely obedient. Well then, you – like me – need to hear what Zechariah had to hear during his silent Advent. If you haven't been able to produce perfect obedience of God's Law, then you need to hear what Zechariah did: that obedience isn't enough, even though you couldn't possibly meet that goal anyway. What each of us needs is what Zechariah found out he needed. We need the gift of faith.
How could Zechariah be sure that what Gabriel had told him about his son John was true? Through faith. How can you and I be sure that what God has told us about his Son Jesus is true? Through faith.
The Holy Spirit has called each of us to saving faith through the Gospel. In Baptism God has washed us clean. In Holy Communion He sustains us by feeding us with Jesus's body and blood. Zechariah's son of promise was born in order to preach the coming of the Savior to the world. And even today we rehearse the giving and hearing of that promise, we re-enact the waiting for the birth of John and of Jesus, we await the gift of our Lord who actually did obey all God's commandments and observe his regulations blamelessly ... and did it all faithfully.
Our Lord Jesus came to earth to save each one of us from the just punishment for our sins. This Advent season, if we listen carefully, if we step into Zechariah's experience at least a little bit, and if we shut out the noise of the world, then we can perhaps in silence listen to what God is telling us.
Listen. Turn off the chatter. Turn off the email and cell phones. Turn off the radio and the television. Turn off the advertisements. Turn it all off and listen. God says He loves you. God says He forgives you. God says He sent His Son Jesus to save you. Accept the gift of faith He gives you. Live in it. Rejoice in it. Don't fall back into trying to save yourself by obeying His laws. Zechariah couldn't do it. You can't do it. You don't need to. Jesus already did; he has already made everything right between you and God. Because He loves you. Listen.
Amen.
And may the peace of God that passes all human understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
S.D.G.
A sermon to be preached at St. Paul Lutheran Church, Columbia, Pa. on Wednesday evening, 2 December 2009, the first Wednesday in Advent, and based on the assigned Gospel text for the day: St. Luke 1:5-24a, 57-64, the story of Zechariah.
Grace, mercy, and peace be yours in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
[the text]
Dear Friends in Christ,
Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth were faithful, observant followers of the Law, and they stand in line with other faithful followers of the Lord who were blessed with children of Promise when (like Abraham and Sarah) they were past the usual age of child-bearing or (like Hannah and Elkanah) they were long considered incapable of having children together. God worked miracles with all these couples in order to further the working out of His promise of salvation. Next Wednesday we will ponder Elizabeth's part of the Advent story. Tonight we consider the story of Zechariah the priest, and the silence of Advent. It is primarily his silence, but it can and should be our silence as well.
As a priest, it was Zechariah's honor to be selected one day from among the thousands of priests of God to be the one to approach the altar in the temple at Jerusalem and burn incense while his division was on duty. He was chosen by lot, a method that was intended no doubt to make the selection unbiased, but which also allowed it to be directed by God. And this was certainly one time when God directed the casting of the lots for His own purposes. It was in this way that the Lord got Zechariah off by himself, and had his undivided attention. God sent His angel Gabriel to communicate with His priest.
Despite the fact that – as Luke tells us – both Zechariah and Elizabeth “were upright in the sight of God, observing all the Lord's commandments and regulations blamelessly,” it still came as a shock to Zechariah when the angel appeared there at the right side of the altar. It's the sort of apparition that one might have hoped for. It was the kind of confirmation that someone could even have prayed for. Still, when it happened Zechariah was “startled and gripped with fear.” My guess is that there hadn't been any classes in priest school about how to deal with this sort of event.
The angel's message was that Zechariah should not be afraid, and that his prayer had been heard: he and Elizabeth were to become parents.
And not only that, but what a child this would be! “He will be great in the sight of the Lord” Gabriel says. This child will bring many of the people of Israel back to the Lord. His work will be undertaken in the spirit and power of Elijah. In other words, this was going to be one special boy.
Zechariah was stunned by this announcement. Not quite speechless, he stutters out the question: “How can I be sure of this?” and the explanation: “I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.” In this simple, logical, and understandable question you and I can see that what was lacking in Zechariah's life to that point was not the gift of a child, but the gift of absolute faith. At this point Gabriel introduces himself by name, reviews his angelic credentials (“I stand in the presence of God and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news ... this Gospel.”), and finally gives Zechariah the sign he thinks he needs to confirm Gabriel's good news. Because he “did not believe” Zechariah will take out of the Holy Place in the Temple both the promise of a son, and the sign of silence.
It must have made for an interesting homecoming when Zechariah got home to the hill country of Judea after his time of service at the Temple was up. The people who had been praying in the outer part of the Temple somehow understood that Zechariah had seen a vision inside. So perhaps it wasn't difficult for Elizabeth to understand the same thing. Zechariah, we can imagine, was likely bursting at the seams with the story of his experience, but he was unable to tell Elizabeth. He hadn't even been able to give the people at the Temple the benediction they were expecting, but was only able to keep making signs to them. When he got home, we can suppose he continued making signs to his wife and possibly also wrote short messages to her on the same writing tablet he would later use to name their son. Other than that, though, Zechariah spent the next 9 months in silence.
This is the silence of Advent. It is the silence of patient expectation, the silence of waiting for the fulfillment of the Promise. It is the silence of listening.
Now, some commentators think that Luke is also saying that Zechariah was deaf during this time. They pick out a phrase from the end of the story where the friends and relatives “made signs to [Zechariah] to find out what he would like to name the child.” I'm not so sure about that myself because Gabriel doesn't say anything about deafness. But since deaf people often don't speak out loud very much I can see the neighbors thinking that a speechless Zechariah must also be a non-hearing one. I would rather believe that Zechariah had spent the months of his wife's pregnancy listening.
The first thing Zechariah got the chance to do when exercising his gift of silence was, obviously, to shut his own mouth. Some of us spend an awful lot of time talking, don't we? And those of us who are not talking spend an awful lot of time thinking about what we'll say when we get a chance. Back home from Jerusalem, Zechariah found that he couldn't fill the air with his own words, and that there wasn't any point in planning what to say when he could get a word in edgewise since he couldn't talk anyway. So he was forced to sit back and listen. He listed to Elizabeth, to be sure. And he listened to God.
That is something you and I can learn from. We can spend our lives “observing all the Lord's commandments and regulations blamelessly” but if we don't really listen to what the Lord wants of us, it will really be for naught.
What are some ways we can listen to God?
We can listen with Zechariah to the Word of God. He had the extremely rare privilege and blessing of a direct and personal Word brought from the presence of the Lord by one of His angels. But a vision of an angel is rare in our days. Instead, we hear God's Word to us through the Bible. That's one thing Zechariah would have done during his silent Advent. He would have continued to go to the local synagogue and continued to hear God's word read there at times of worship. Reading the lessons in church is not simply an formal exercise, but is a real chance for us to hear God speaking to each of us.
Zechariah probably also read from God's word on his own, in between services. You and I are able to read God's Word freely whenever we want. We have the gift of printed Bibles available to us, in a variety of understandable translations, Bibles that we can read whenever we want. Like Zechariah did, we can listen to God speak to us in our hearts as we ponder, think about, an meditate on God's Word.
We have many, many opportunities to hear God's Word.
And when we really stop and listen to it, God brings blessings to us through it.
So what sorts of things do we hear? What is the message that the Bible brings to us from the presence of God? At root, it is the same message that Gabriel gave to Zechariah in the Temple.
Listen to it now. God is happy that you – like Zechariah and Elizabeth – have obeyed all his commandments. He is glad that you have observed his regulations blamelessly.
...Or perhaps you haven't reached that level of perfection. Perhaps you haven't been absolutely obedient. Well then, you – like me – need to hear what Zechariah had to hear during his silent Advent. If you haven't been able to produce perfect obedience of God's Law, then you need to hear what Zechariah did: that obedience isn't enough, even though you couldn't possibly meet that goal anyway. What each of us needs is what Zechariah found out he needed. We need the gift of faith.
How could Zechariah be sure that what Gabriel had told him about his son John was true? Through faith. How can you and I be sure that what God has told us about his Son Jesus is true? Through faith.
The Holy Spirit has called each of us to saving faith through the Gospel. In Baptism God has washed us clean. In Holy Communion He sustains us by feeding us with Jesus's body and blood. Zechariah's son of promise was born in order to preach the coming of the Savior to the world. And even today we rehearse the giving and hearing of that promise, we re-enact the waiting for the birth of John and of Jesus, we await the gift of our Lord who actually did obey all God's commandments and observe his regulations blamelessly ... and did it all faithfully.
Our Lord Jesus came to earth to save each one of us from the just punishment for our sins. This Advent season, if we listen carefully, if we step into Zechariah's experience at least a little bit, and if we shut out the noise of the world, then we can perhaps in silence listen to what God is telling us.
Listen. Turn off the chatter. Turn off the email and cell phones. Turn off the radio and the television. Turn off the advertisements. Turn it all off and listen. God says He loves you. God says He forgives you. God says He sent His Son Jesus to save you. Accept the gift of faith He gives you. Live in it. Rejoice in it. Don't fall back into trying to save yourself by obeying His laws. Zechariah couldn't do it. You can't do it. You don't need to. Jesus already did; he has already made everything right between you and God. Because He loves you. Listen.
Amen.
And may the peace of God that passes all human understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
S.D.G.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Withdrawals, Spiritual and Otherwise
I.N.I.
A sermon to be preached at St. Paul Lutheran Church, Columbia, PA on Wednesday evening, 18 March 2009, and based on the lessons assigned in the Lenten series being used (2 Sam. 11:26-12:13; Eph. 4:22-32; Gal. 5:19-25; and Matt. 26:69-75) but especially the Gospel, and focusing on the theme word assigned by the series: “Withdrawal”.
Dear Friends in Christ,
The theme words for each of this year's mid-week Lenten services are supposed to focus our attention on different things that cause relationship and communication problems. This week's word is “withdrawal” and I was thinking about that word on the way home from church last week. About the first thought I had was that a “withdrawal” is a good thing if it's a withdrawal from my bank account. It's good because being able to withdraw money means, first of all, that I still have money to withdraw, but also that my bank is still in business, and that I'm going to now be able to buy something nice for myself or someone else. So, how, I wondered, can I make a “withdrawal” into something that causes problems?
Well, that didn't take too long to figure out. I got to thinking that any kind of withdrawal results in one party having the thing withdrawn, while the other party has an empty nothing, a gap, a hole, or a loss that could be difficult to deal with. If I withdraw enough money from my savings account, then I could have a zero balance. If I withdraw troops from a battlefield, then there might be a gap in my defenses. If I withdraw from a relationship, then the other person has a personal gap to fill.
I. WITHDRAWING IN THE PASSION STORY
Let's turn our attention first of all to the Gospel for this evening and look at the withdrawing that took place in it. I would suppose that we've all heard this story before: Peter follows the unruly crowd of soldiers and civilians who arrested Jesus in the Garden, and goes so far as to enter the courtyard outside where the Lord was undergoing His trial. While he's standing there hoping to catch some word about what was happening with Jesus, one of the servant girls recognized him and pointed it out. Peter denied it and pulled back to the gateway
When Peter withdrew from the courtyard what empty places did he leave behind? Well, first of all we don't know that there were any other believers there, so we lost eye witnesses to that part of the Lord's life. The servant girl, too, lost out. I guess I've always followed the interpretation that this girl was accusing Peter, was trying to stick Peter with the same accusations that were being brought against Jesus. But look at the words of the text: 'she came to him and she said...' The text doesn't say she was accusing him. There's the chance that she was on Peter's side and just wanted to have that confirmed before sharing some news with him, or asking Peter for some comforting word on what he thought was going to happen. In other words, Peter missed a huge Ablaze moment here, in which he could have shared something about the love of Jesus with this servant girl.
Then, after withdrawing out to the gateway, another servant points out to those standing around that Peter was with Jesus. Had she seen them together at the Temple? Had she heard the Sermon on the Mount perhaps? Or had she been in the crowd at the feeding of the 5,000? We don't know. All we do know is that Peter pulled back a little further, that he didn't engage her in conversation, that he denied his relationship with the Lord a second time.
Finally, someone else hanging around there at the gateway – maybe a relative of some other prisoner, or perhaps a reporter for the 1st century version of Jerusalem's newspaper, or maybe another fringe believer who needed some encouragement to strengthen his faith – for the third time that night some person (the text actually says it was “those standing there”, i.e., a group of people) went to Peter and, pointing out his giveaway accent, said 'surely you are one of them'. And Peter blows up. He curses and swears that he doesn't know what they're talking about. He says he doesn't know Jesus. With that he withdraws from the place altogether. He leaves.
Now one of the most relevant things about this series of actions is that we find Peter withdrawing from Jesus as well as from the servants. The more he denies his relationship with the Lord, the further Peter gets from him physically. The more he denies, the further Peter also gets spiritually and emotionally. Peter pulls away from the Lord and gets more distraught. He pulls away and gets more violent in speech.
II. WITHDRAWING IN OUR LIVES
I would suggest that the same thing happens with us. We can pull away from people around us, withdrawing our presence and our support from them. But we can also withdraw from God as fully as Peter did.
How do we pull away from other people? Two people are talking and one just walks away. Perhaps, unfortunately so, it's easiest to picture happening within a marriage. It happens way to often. Sometimes it's done physically. Sometimes it's done emotionally. The reasons are many. The effects are the same. A gap appears. A large empty space develops where the relationship used to be.
Now sometimes the silences in a relationship are simply the result of the way different people process information. Some folks just need to think about things and work them through in their own heads, and they just can't talk about them sooner. Other folks process information by talking about it out loud. There are many chances for misunderstanding when one person of each of these types is on each side of a discussion that needs to make progress and reach resolution. A good solution is really for each person to understand their own way of working things out, AND to accept that the other person has a different, just as valid, way of working things out. Both need to be patient with the other.
But the wiles of Satan worm their way into our relationships, too. There are times where people intentionally turn their backs on a discussion partner, determined to cut off conversation and relationship in order to punish the other person. A refusal to communicate can be introduced by any and all of the “acts of a sinful nature” that Paul listed in the lesson from Galatians. Every one of them breaks relationships and causes one person to withdraw from another.
How do we pull away from God? With the same kind of active or passive relationship breaking. Think about how King David broke his relationship with God by lusting after Uriah's wife, by manipulating troop assignments in order to be sure that Uriah would die in battle, and by taking Uriah's widow as his own wife. There was both active and passive sinning there. Think about how we all have both an old self and a new self, an old Adam and a new Adam, a sinful self and a saintly self. Sometimes we just don't put off the old and put on the new, as Paul urges in Ephesians. Sometimes, like an old pair of pants, the old self seems too comfortable to get rid of even though it isn't either helpful or attractive.
The bottom line is that whenever we act or think in ways that perpetuate the sinful side of life, we withdraw from God. Adam and Even did just that in the Garden after eating the forbidden fruit. They withdrew from God and went into hiding. What results when we pull away from God is a huge empty space in our lives, an unfilled gap, a void, a vacuum. We're left with something that does not nourish us in any way. Sin creates a dark nothingness in our souls.
III. RESTORING WITHDRAWN RELATIONSHIPS
When we think about those empty places in our lives, whether they're empty places in our relationships with other people or with God, we're often struck with a sense of helplessness. Maybe we feel like we just can't do anything to fix them. Certainly that happens in our relationships with other people. In those relationships we're taught that “it takes two to tango” that is, it take two people to dance together and if one partner sits out, the other can't go on. That's where we need to seek cooperation and working together to find our way out of a communications breakdown. Counselors and relationship books are replete with suggestions. But if one partner refuses to join in, there isn't much in the end that the other partner can do to get the relationship going again.
Our relationship with God has an echo of that in it. Except that the refusal to participate in the relationship, the withdrawal from the relationship turns out to be all from our side. It gets to be a real vicious circle: in sin we pull away, then we don't recognize the love God wants to share with us, and, feeling unloved, we pull back further from God; which makes us feel less love. As suited as we are for living closely to our God, it's amazing that all we see on our own is the empty place created by our withdrawal. But that's the way it is.
So it's a good thing, it's a real blessing, that God reaches across the gap we've created. Take, just for example, what happened between King David and the Lord. David had created this huge gap between himself and the Lord, but could do nothing about it until the prophet Nathan came to him with God's Word. Nathan told that parable about the poor man's little ewe lamb that caught David's attention and sort of tricked David into speaking a word of judgment against himself. David, in essence, spoke the Law about his own case. Then David confessed his sin in verse 13 “I have sinned against the Lord.” But it takes Nathan to speak the forgiving word of the Gospel: “The Lord has taken away your sin, You are not going to die.”
God continues to reach across the gaps we create. Our Gospel tonight ends with Peter having recognized his sinfulness, going out to weep bitterly. But after the resurrection Jesus came to him with the forgiveness and reconciliation needed to fill to gap Peter had created, calling Peter to “Feed my lambs.”
Both of tonight's Epistles speak, too, of the coming of the Holy Spirit into the lives of people. In Ephesians the Apostle writes that “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self.” (in other words, you couldn't do it yourselves, and hadn't really even conceived of putting off your old sinful selves). And in Galatians he draws such a strong contrast between the acts of the sinful nature and the fruit of the Spirit, too. The two really cannot co-exist.
So when our Lord calls to us, only then can we react. We're powered to do so by His all-powerful Word. Until we hear God's Word, we just keep digging ourselves in deeper and deeper (as Peter did that night long ago. Until we hear God's Word we wander further and further away as King David did.
Thank the Lord that he provides us the Sacraments, too, that are signs and seals of God's forgiveness and love for us. Without them, we would have no tangible assurance of the ways in which Jesus continues to reach out to us.
God's Word and his Sacraments are the divine means provided for us as the only way to bridge the gap created by our withdrawal from God. Our spiritual withdrawals away from the Lord are never a good thing. Tonight we can praise him that He provides us a way out, forgiving us our sins because Jesus took the penalty in our places when he died on Calvary's cross. Remember that, and rely on his forgiveness and the power of his Holy Spirit to make things right in your lives.
Amen.
S.D.G.
A sermon to be preached at St. Paul Lutheran Church, Columbia, PA on Wednesday evening, 18 March 2009, and based on the lessons assigned in the Lenten series being used (2 Sam. 11:26-12:13; Eph. 4:22-32; Gal. 5:19-25; and Matt. 26:69-75) but especially the Gospel, and focusing on the theme word assigned by the series: “Withdrawal”.
Dear Friends in Christ,
The theme words for each of this year's mid-week Lenten services are supposed to focus our attention on different things that cause relationship and communication problems. This week's word is “withdrawal” and I was thinking about that word on the way home from church last week. About the first thought I had was that a “withdrawal” is a good thing if it's a withdrawal from my bank account. It's good because being able to withdraw money means, first of all, that I still have money to withdraw, but also that my bank is still in business, and that I'm going to now be able to buy something nice for myself or someone else. So, how, I wondered, can I make a “withdrawal” into something that causes problems?
Well, that didn't take too long to figure out. I got to thinking that any kind of withdrawal results in one party having the thing withdrawn, while the other party has an empty nothing, a gap, a hole, or a loss that could be difficult to deal with. If I withdraw enough money from my savings account, then I could have a zero balance. If I withdraw troops from a battlefield, then there might be a gap in my defenses. If I withdraw from a relationship, then the other person has a personal gap to fill.
I. WITHDRAWING IN THE PASSION STORY
Let's turn our attention first of all to the Gospel for this evening and look at the withdrawing that took place in it. I would suppose that we've all heard this story before: Peter follows the unruly crowd of soldiers and civilians who arrested Jesus in the Garden, and goes so far as to enter the courtyard outside where the Lord was undergoing His trial. While he's standing there hoping to catch some word about what was happening with Jesus, one of the servant girls recognized him and pointed it out. Peter denied it and pulled back to the gateway
When Peter withdrew from the courtyard what empty places did he leave behind? Well, first of all we don't know that there were any other believers there, so we lost eye witnesses to that part of the Lord's life. The servant girl, too, lost out. I guess I've always followed the interpretation that this girl was accusing Peter, was trying to stick Peter with the same accusations that were being brought against Jesus. But look at the words of the text: 'she came to him and she said...' The text doesn't say she was accusing him. There's the chance that she was on Peter's side and just wanted to have that confirmed before sharing some news with him, or asking Peter for some comforting word on what he thought was going to happen. In other words, Peter missed a huge Ablaze moment here, in which he could have shared something about the love of Jesus with this servant girl.
Then, after withdrawing out to the gateway, another servant points out to those standing around that Peter was with Jesus. Had she seen them together at the Temple? Had she heard the Sermon on the Mount perhaps? Or had she been in the crowd at the feeding of the 5,000? We don't know. All we do know is that Peter pulled back a little further, that he didn't engage her in conversation, that he denied his relationship with the Lord a second time.
Finally, someone else hanging around there at the gateway – maybe a relative of some other prisoner, or perhaps a reporter for the 1st century version of Jerusalem's newspaper, or maybe another fringe believer who needed some encouragement to strengthen his faith – for the third time that night some person (the text actually says it was “those standing there”, i.e., a group of people) went to Peter and, pointing out his giveaway accent, said 'surely you are one of them'. And Peter blows up. He curses and swears that he doesn't know what they're talking about. He says he doesn't know Jesus. With that he withdraws from the place altogether. He leaves.
Now one of the most relevant things about this series of actions is that we find Peter withdrawing from Jesus as well as from the servants. The more he denies his relationship with the Lord, the further Peter gets from him physically. The more he denies, the further Peter also gets spiritually and emotionally. Peter pulls away from the Lord and gets more distraught. He pulls away and gets more violent in speech.
II. WITHDRAWING IN OUR LIVES
I would suggest that the same thing happens with us. We can pull away from people around us, withdrawing our presence and our support from them. But we can also withdraw from God as fully as Peter did.
How do we pull away from other people? Two people are talking and one just walks away. Perhaps, unfortunately so, it's easiest to picture happening within a marriage. It happens way to often. Sometimes it's done physically. Sometimes it's done emotionally. The reasons are many. The effects are the same. A gap appears. A large empty space develops where the relationship used to be.
Now sometimes the silences in a relationship are simply the result of the way different people process information. Some folks just need to think about things and work them through in their own heads, and they just can't talk about them sooner. Other folks process information by talking about it out loud. There are many chances for misunderstanding when one person of each of these types is on each side of a discussion that needs to make progress and reach resolution. A good solution is really for each person to understand their own way of working things out, AND to accept that the other person has a different, just as valid, way of working things out. Both need to be patient with the other.
But the wiles of Satan worm their way into our relationships, too. There are times where people intentionally turn their backs on a discussion partner, determined to cut off conversation and relationship in order to punish the other person. A refusal to communicate can be introduced by any and all of the “acts of a sinful nature” that Paul listed in the lesson from Galatians. Every one of them breaks relationships and causes one person to withdraw from another.
How do we pull away from God? With the same kind of active or passive relationship breaking. Think about how King David broke his relationship with God by lusting after Uriah's wife, by manipulating troop assignments in order to be sure that Uriah would die in battle, and by taking Uriah's widow as his own wife. There was both active and passive sinning there. Think about how we all have both an old self and a new self, an old Adam and a new Adam, a sinful self and a saintly self. Sometimes we just don't put off the old and put on the new, as Paul urges in Ephesians. Sometimes, like an old pair of pants, the old self seems too comfortable to get rid of even though it isn't either helpful or attractive.
The bottom line is that whenever we act or think in ways that perpetuate the sinful side of life, we withdraw from God. Adam and Even did just that in the Garden after eating the forbidden fruit. They withdrew from God and went into hiding. What results when we pull away from God is a huge empty space in our lives, an unfilled gap, a void, a vacuum. We're left with something that does not nourish us in any way. Sin creates a dark nothingness in our souls.
III. RESTORING WITHDRAWN RELATIONSHIPS
When we think about those empty places in our lives, whether they're empty places in our relationships with other people or with God, we're often struck with a sense of helplessness. Maybe we feel like we just can't do anything to fix them. Certainly that happens in our relationships with other people. In those relationships we're taught that “it takes two to tango” that is, it take two people to dance together and if one partner sits out, the other can't go on. That's where we need to seek cooperation and working together to find our way out of a communications breakdown. Counselors and relationship books are replete with suggestions. But if one partner refuses to join in, there isn't much in the end that the other partner can do to get the relationship going again.
Our relationship with God has an echo of that in it. Except that the refusal to participate in the relationship, the withdrawal from the relationship turns out to be all from our side. It gets to be a real vicious circle: in sin we pull away, then we don't recognize the love God wants to share with us, and, feeling unloved, we pull back further from God; which makes us feel less love. As suited as we are for living closely to our God, it's amazing that all we see on our own is the empty place created by our withdrawal. But that's the way it is.
So it's a good thing, it's a real blessing, that God reaches across the gap we've created. Take, just for example, what happened between King David and the Lord. David had created this huge gap between himself and the Lord, but could do nothing about it until the prophet Nathan came to him with God's Word. Nathan told that parable about the poor man's little ewe lamb that caught David's attention and sort of tricked David into speaking a word of judgment against himself. David, in essence, spoke the Law about his own case. Then David confessed his sin in verse 13 “I have sinned against the Lord.” But it takes Nathan to speak the forgiving word of the Gospel: “The Lord has taken away your sin, You are not going to die.”
God continues to reach across the gaps we create. Our Gospel tonight ends with Peter having recognized his sinfulness, going out to weep bitterly. But after the resurrection Jesus came to him with the forgiveness and reconciliation needed to fill to gap Peter had created, calling Peter to “Feed my lambs.”
Both of tonight's Epistles speak, too, of the coming of the Holy Spirit into the lives of people. In Ephesians the Apostle writes that “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self.” (in other words, you couldn't do it yourselves, and hadn't really even conceived of putting off your old sinful selves). And in Galatians he draws such a strong contrast between the acts of the sinful nature and the fruit of the Spirit, too. The two really cannot co-exist.
So when our Lord calls to us, only then can we react. We're powered to do so by His all-powerful Word. Until we hear God's Word, we just keep digging ourselves in deeper and deeper (as Peter did that night long ago. Until we hear God's Word we wander further and further away as King David did.
Thank the Lord that he provides us the Sacraments, too, that are signs and seals of God's forgiveness and love for us. Without them, we would have no tangible assurance of the ways in which Jesus continues to reach out to us.
God's Word and his Sacraments are the divine means provided for us as the only way to bridge the gap created by our withdrawal from God. Our spiritual withdrawals away from the Lord are never a good thing. Tonight we can praise him that He provides us a way out, forgiving us our sins because Jesus took the penalty in our places when he died on Calvary's cross. Remember that, and rely on his forgiveness and the power of his Holy Spirit to make things right in your lives.
Amen.
S.D.G.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
People: Invalidated and Validated
I.N.I.
A sermon to be preached at St. Paul Lutheran Church, Columbia, PA on Wednesday evening Lenten service, 11 March 2009, and based on the assigned lessons for the evening (Jeremiah 17:5-14; Romans 5:1-11; Matthew 27:27-31) and the theme “Invalidation” [particularly in relationships and conversations].
Dear Friends in Christ,
I imagine that most of us here have been to a doctor's office or a store or some other place of business and been told that we could get our parking tickets validated. We know that means the doctor or business will take care of the parking. We'll get off free. They'll pay for us.
Many of the people going to a doctor, of course, are not going for an annual check-up or a just-in-case visit. They're going instead because they are sick. Maybe they're even invalids. (Invalids being people who are weak or infirm, in chronic ill health. Maybe a lot of the people we call “shut-ins” would count as “invalids”, too.) In those cases they not only want their parking ticket validated, they themselves want to be validated. The invalid wants to taken care of, too, would love to get off free from his or her ailments even more than from the parking lot fee.
And we would all agree that anyone who would add to the troubles of an invalid should, well, be punished. Invalids are weak, maybe a little helpless, certainly not able to fully defend themselves. We are definitely not like the pack of wild animals who leave their weak members behind, undefended, because the herd or flock has to move on in migration. We defend them, take care of them, do what we can to make their lives better.
Well, most of the time. Or some of the time, anyway.
Sometimes sin kicks in. Sometimes a complicated mix of desires and emotions keeps us from taking care of those who need care. Maybe it is greed on our part. Or maybe it's a lack of love. It could be a lot of things. But however complicated it might be, the thing that makes us not care for the invalids among us – whether they're physical invalids, or mental invalids, or moral invalids, or spiritual invalids – the thing that holds us back is simply sin. Sin kicks in and we invalidate the invalid.
We're not inventive that way, though. It's something that has been going on for centuries. Our Gospel text for this evening shows us a case of it, did you notice? In this case there was sin in and around the Roman soldiers in Jerusalem who kicked in Jesus. What an ugly scene that would have been. And it was probably the kind of thing those men did on a regular basis.
It was really like any other case of the bullies gathered around some weaker kid on the playground. Of course we know there was no playing here. And we know that the taunts they threw at Jesus fully intended to take him to His knees and then to His death. These soldiers had seen this sort of set up before and knew where it was going to end. But meanwhile they got their jollies by making fun of the quiet, shackled man who stood in their midst.
They'd heard him called “king” and they grabbed that theme and ran with it. Get him some sort of 'king outfit'! Get him some kind of crown! Get him a fake royal staff! If this weak-looking prisoner wants to be a king, let's even kneel before him!
In stories we write or in our movies and tv shows, that would only go so far before our hero revealed his true nature, threw off the scarlet robe, sent the crown of thorns flying through the room, and blasted those soldiers away. But we didn't write this story. God did. And we know it turned out differently. The soldiers continued to invalidate the Son of God until they tired of their sick games and it got time for them to lead him outside where they knew they would be putting him to death.
After a true story like that, you'd think people might change. And, who knows? Maybe that squad of soldiers did get changed by their experience that day. It's something we can never know this side of Heaven.
The people who haven't changed, not fully, are not the just the people back then, but the people here today, yes even here in this church tonight. Here's an important point tonight: These patterns or habits of invalidation against Jesus are echoed when we continue them against fellow humans. We, too, get kicks by invalidating other people. Our Wednesday theme this Lent is about different relationship ills, different ways we break or hinder our relationships with other people. Tonight's theme word there on the cover and first page of our bulletin is “Invalidation.” The idea is that there are ways each of us, by the strength and power of our sinful natures invalidate people.
Now, we more likely use words than crowns of thorns and spitting and hitting. But I'm guessing that while, as children, we learned to chant “sticks and stones can can break my bones .....” we all learned long ago that words really DO hurt us. It's probably easier for us to remember those times and places where someone said something hurtful to us, than it is for us to remember when we were the ones hurting. But we've all done the hurting, too. And – odd thing – sometimes we do it even when we're pretending to be helpful.
One of the easiest ways we invalidate people is by not listening to what they're really saying. Someone tells us, for example, 'boy, this economy has really got me nervous' and perhaps all we say is 'oh, come on, it's not that bad, why I remember a time....' Or maybe we hear someone say something like 'I really miss my parents (or spouse)' and our answer is 'Well, it's been a year now, don't you think it's time to be getting on with life?'
When we respond like that we are not sharing a story (in the first case) or helping someone deal with the pain (in the second case). What we're doing is invalidating them by calling their feeling invalid.
Here's more bad news: These patterns or habits of invalidation against Jesus are echoed when we continue them against God.
We don't listen to what God is telling us. We don't follow His directions for our lives. He went out of His way to create us, to give us a place to live, to be sure we had a way to be in relationship with Him. And we as good as say we don't care.
We're as weak as the Roman soldiers were about stopping. I suppose there was a lot of peer pressure operating there in the Praetorium that night and morning. Some guy was bored and started the mockery rolling, and everyone felt compelled to join in and push it up a notch. If they ever thought about it they probably said that they felt helpless to stop it, even helpless to stand back and just avoid joining in.
That's just how we are today. We can't simply stop sin from ruling our world and our lives. And we can't even just stand back and let things carry on without participating. Sometimes we even make resolutions or promise ourselves that “next time it'll be different; next time I won't invalidate his or her feelings; next time I'll be a genuine friend.” But when it comes down to it, left to ourselves, our promises like that don't get us very far. We're really invalids, weak and helpless, when it comes to bringing about that kind of real change in our lives.
It's like we need some external power, something outside ourselves, to start the process of validating. Just as we can't validate our own parking ticket, neither can we validate our own actions and speech. We really do need something from outside to make us different inside. We don't have it in us to make the change.
But our glorious God does. He changes us.
Our God validates us in our baptism. He tells us, “Look, my Holy Spirit is calling you by the Gospel, enlightening you with His gifts, and is going to keep you in the one true faith. Here's a sign of my gracious love that washes away your sins. Remember every day that I am making you clean in this Baptism. Whenever you're tempted to sin, and whenever habits, companions or laziness are pulling you to invalidate some of my other creatures, recall your Baptism and use it today as a shield against those temptations.”
And God validates us at the Lord's Supper. We gather at this altar and God reaches across the divides of space and time to come to us in the actual body and blood of our Savior Jesus. He says to us, “I know you need strength for the journey of your life. I know the cares of this sinful world you're living in will wear you down. But I also know that my beloved Son is so burstingly full of life that if you had just a little of him inside you, then you would be refreshed and ready to continue on. So here, take and eat, this is His true body; take and drink, this is His true blood. Be refreshed. Be forgiven.”
God reaches out to us in His word and in these sacraments, stretching across the divide of sin to validate each and every one of us. When he does that, suddenly we're able to validate other people instead of invalidating them with hurtful, sinful, speech and actions. “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.... While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” THAT is what gives us the power and motivation to stop invalidating other people; THAT is what allows us to validate them.
May our God and Father, who validated each of us through the life-giving death ad resurrection of Jesus Christ, give you a peace that passes all understanding and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
S.D.G.
A sermon to be preached at St. Paul Lutheran Church, Columbia, PA on Wednesday evening Lenten service, 11 March 2009, and based on the assigned lessons for the evening (Jeremiah 17:5-14; Romans 5:1-11; Matthew 27:27-31) and the theme “Invalidation” [particularly in relationships and conversations].
Dear Friends in Christ,
I imagine that most of us here have been to a doctor's office or a store or some other place of business and been told that we could get our parking tickets validated. We know that means the doctor or business will take care of the parking. We'll get off free. They'll pay for us.
Many of the people going to a doctor, of course, are not going for an annual check-up or a just-in-case visit. They're going instead because they are sick. Maybe they're even invalids. (Invalids being people who are weak or infirm, in chronic ill health. Maybe a lot of the people we call “shut-ins” would count as “invalids”, too.) In those cases they not only want their parking ticket validated, they themselves want to be validated. The invalid wants to taken care of, too, would love to get off free from his or her ailments even more than from the parking lot fee.
And we would all agree that anyone who would add to the troubles of an invalid should, well, be punished. Invalids are weak, maybe a little helpless, certainly not able to fully defend themselves. We are definitely not like the pack of wild animals who leave their weak members behind, undefended, because the herd or flock has to move on in migration. We defend them, take care of them, do what we can to make their lives better.
Well, most of the time. Or some of the time, anyway.
Sometimes sin kicks in. Sometimes a complicated mix of desires and emotions keeps us from taking care of those who need care. Maybe it is greed on our part. Or maybe it's a lack of love. It could be a lot of things. But however complicated it might be, the thing that makes us not care for the invalids among us – whether they're physical invalids, or mental invalids, or moral invalids, or spiritual invalids – the thing that holds us back is simply sin. Sin kicks in and we invalidate the invalid.
We're not inventive that way, though. It's something that has been going on for centuries. Our Gospel text for this evening shows us a case of it, did you notice? In this case there was sin in and around the Roman soldiers in Jerusalem who kicked in Jesus. What an ugly scene that would have been. And it was probably the kind of thing those men did on a regular basis.
It was really like any other case of the bullies gathered around some weaker kid on the playground. Of course we know there was no playing here. And we know that the taunts they threw at Jesus fully intended to take him to His knees and then to His death. These soldiers had seen this sort of set up before and knew where it was going to end. But meanwhile they got their jollies by making fun of the quiet, shackled man who stood in their midst.
They'd heard him called “king” and they grabbed that theme and ran with it. Get him some sort of 'king outfit'! Get him some kind of crown! Get him a fake royal staff! If this weak-looking prisoner wants to be a king, let's even kneel before him!
In stories we write or in our movies and tv shows, that would only go so far before our hero revealed his true nature, threw off the scarlet robe, sent the crown of thorns flying through the room, and blasted those soldiers away. But we didn't write this story. God did. And we know it turned out differently. The soldiers continued to invalidate the Son of God until they tired of their sick games and it got time for them to lead him outside where they knew they would be putting him to death.
After a true story like that, you'd think people might change. And, who knows? Maybe that squad of soldiers did get changed by their experience that day. It's something we can never know this side of Heaven.
The people who haven't changed, not fully, are not the just the people back then, but the people here today, yes even here in this church tonight. Here's an important point tonight: These patterns or habits of invalidation against Jesus are echoed when we continue them against fellow humans. We, too, get kicks by invalidating other people. Our Wednesday theme this Lent is about different relationship ills, different ways we break or hinder our relationships with other people. Tonight's theme word there on the cover and first page of our bulletin is “Invalidation.” The idea is that there are ways each of us, by the strength and power of our sinful natures invalidate people.
Now, we more likely use words than crowns of thorns and spitting and hitting. But I'm guessing that while, as children, we learned to chant “sticks and stones can can break my bones .....” we all learned long ago that words really DO hurt us. It's probably easier for us to remember those times and places where someone said something hurtful to us, than it is for us to remember when we were the ones hurting. But we've all done the hurting, too. And – odd thing – sometimes we do it even when we're pretending to be helpful.
One of the easiest ways we invalidate people is by not listening to what they're really saying. Someone tells us, for example, 'boy, this economy has really got me nervous' and perhaps all we say is 'oh, come on, it's not that bad, why I remember a time....' Or maybe we hear someone say something like 'I really miss my parents (or spouse)' and our answer is 'Well, it's been a year now, don't you think it's time to be getting on with life?'
When we respond like that we are not sharing a story (in the first case) or helping someone deal with the pain (in the second case). What we're doing is invalidating them by calling their feeling invalid.
Here's more bad news: These patterns or habits of invalidation against Jesus are echoed when we continue them against God.
We don't listen to what God is telling us. We don't follow His directions for our lives. He went out of His way to create us, to give us a place to live, to be sure we had a way to be in relationship with Him. And we as good as say we don't care.
We're as weak as the Roman soldiers were about stopping. I suppose there was a lot of peer pressure operating there in the Praetorium that night and morning. Some guy was bored and started the mockery rolling, and everyone felt compelled to join in and push it up a notch. If they ever thought about it they probably said that they felt helpless to stop it, even helpless to stand back and just avoid joining in.
That's just how we are today. We can't simply stop sin from ruling our world and our lives. And we can't even just stand back and let things carry on without participating. Sometimes we even make resolutions or promise ourselves that “next time it'll be different; next time I won't invalidate his or her feelings; next time I'll be a genuine friend.” But when it comes down to it, left to ourselves, our promises like that don't get us very far. We're really invalids, weak and helpless, when it comes to bringing about that kind of real change in our lives.
It's like we need some external power, something outside ourselves, to start the process of validating. Just as we can't validate our own parking ticket, neither can we validate our own actions and speech. We really do need something from outside to make us different inside. We don't have it in us to make the change.
But our glorious God does. He changes us.
Our God validates us in our baptism. He tells us, “Look, my Holy Spirit is calling you by the Gospel, enlightening you with His gifts, and is going to keep you in the one true faith. Here's a sign of my gracious love that washes away your sins. Remember every day that I am making you clean in this Baptism. Whenever you're tempted to sin, and whenever habits, companions or laziness are pulling you to invalidate some of my other creatures, recall your Baptism and use it today as a shield against those temptations.”
And God validates us at the Lord's Supper. We gather at this altar and God reaches across the divides of space and time to come to us in the actual body and blood of our Savior Jesus. He says to us, “I know you need strength for the journey of your life. I know the cares of this sinful world you're living in will wear you down. But I also know that my beloved Son is so burstingly full of life that if you had just a little of him inside you, then you would be refreshed and ready to continue on. So here, take and eat, this is His true body; take and drink, this is His true blood. Be refreshed. Be forgiven.”
God reaches out to us in His word and in these sacraments, stretching across the divide of sin to validate each and every one of us. When he does that, suddenly we're able to validate other people instead of invalidating them with hurtful, sinful, speech and actions. “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.... While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” THAT is what gives us the power and motivation to stop invalidating other people; THAT is what allows us to validate them.
May our God and Father, who validated each of us through the life-giving death ad resurrection of Jesus Christ, give you a peace that passes all understanding and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
S.D.G.
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