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 I got to thinking that any kind of withdrawal results in one party having the thing withdrawn, while the other party has an empty nothing, a gap, a hole, or a loss that could be difficult to deal with.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.