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.