Messiah Lutheran Church, Roseau,
MN
Pentecost 16/September 28, 2014
(Baptism of Bryce Beery)
Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32
In the
name of Jesus. Amen.
You’re
stuck. There’s no way out. Deal with it!
As hard
as it might be to utter those words
to someone else….we know how to say
them to ourselves.
We all
have felt “trapped”…caught in some kind of “closed loop” situation….and
therefore: stuck, fresh out of options,
paralyzed!
Some of
us remember comedian Flip Wilson whose 1970s
TV show popularized the phrase: “The Devil made me do it!”
In other
words: because the Devil made me do it,
I’m not responsible—I’m just a victim.
If it’s
the Devil who made you do something….or if it’s your poor family background, or
fate, or your genes, or just plain dumb luck….well then you’re not responsible. If you’re in the soup—someone else or
something else put you there!
To be
sure, this way of thinking isn’t just “rationalization” or excuse-making. As a recent NY Times column[1] by
Nicholas Kristof pointed out, there are mountains of evidence showing how the
foundations for later life are laid in the first months of a child’s
life—starting even before the child is born.
Drinking alcohol or smoking during pregnancy can be correlated with
things like the child later being suspended or expelled from school…or getting
involved in violent crime. An infant
exposed to constant stress grows up more likely to display a “fight or flight”
hair trigger response to stress throughout life. Choices that parents make dramatically
impact the lives their children will lead.
That
reality is as fresh as today’s newspaper….and it’s as ancient as this morning’s
First Lesson from Ezekiel, where we hear this age-old proverb: “The
parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.”
This
proverb was in vogue among God’s people living in exile in Babylonia six centuries
before the birth of Christ. Exile was
understood to be a punishment for sin—but whose sin was it?
The
exiles, especially those who were younger, didn’t think they had gotten themselves in this mess. It was perhaps only natural that they blame
their parents and grandparents—“Them!
Their wrong decisions, their bad choices incurred God’s wrath and
brought us here to this awful place.
They ate grapes that were rotten—but we’re the ones who got sick—our
parents ate the sour grapes, but we’re the ones grinding our teeth!”
This
proverb had become commonplace in Ezekiel’s day because it encapsulated a
feeling shared by many of the exiles from the land of Israel: “We’re stuck (through no fault of our
own)…there’s no way out…we just have to grin and bear it!”
In
response to this fatalistic thinking, though, another voice intrudes here in
Ezekiel….a voice that says: “Cut it
out! Enough of this ‘stinking thinking’…this
line that blames everyone but yourselves for the life you now live. That is not how things are arranged in God’s
good creation, which is anything but a ‘closed system’ sealed by fate.”
God gets
a word in edgewise here, through the prophet Ezekiel: “Know that all lives are mine; the life of
the parent as well as the life of the child is mine… Cast away from you all the
transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new
heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no
pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God. Turn, then, and live.”
God’s
word runs contrary to the conventional wisdom of the Babylonian exiles. God longs for a relationship with
everyone—each person in their own time, living their lives, in God’s presence. God can’t stand the kind of fatalism that
pervaded the exiles’ imaginations. God
cannot tolerate the notion that we’re all (God included!) stuck in some sort of
closed-loop universe. God refuses to
abide by the “que sera sera,”
whatever-will-be-will-be resignation that is forever insinuating itself into
our heads and hearts!
Try to
hem yourselves in, try to hem God in with such fatalistic thinking—and
something’s going to give! God will burst
out of such closed-loop thinking, the way Jesus burst out of the grave on
Easter morning!
When I
was a little boy—I still remember this!—my pastor preached a sermon with a
title I’ve never forgotten: “Whatever
will be will NOT NECESSARILY be!”
God is
always cracking open whatever is closing you in, stifling your ability to lead
the free, full, abundant life God created you for. And the way God loves to do that best is by
providing for us the path of repentance.
Now the
word “repentance” has taken on a dark, gray hue in our imaginations. It’s all too often a grim, “you gotta”
word…when in reality it is anything but that.
When God pleads, through Ezekiel, with the exiles in Babylon to repent
and turn from all their transgressions….God isn’t laying a new burden upon
them, alongside their deadly fatalistic thinking. No—God is saying to them: “It
doesn’t have to end this way. Sin
and death don’t deserve the last word!
I am opening a doorway for you…a doorway into the world as I intend it
to be, a word in which there is always a chance to start over!
If you
feel stuck, with no way out (says God) I’m here to tell you that there is a way
out—and not just to tell you that, but to point you to it! My gracious gift to you is the gift of being
able to, being empowered to turn from what’s killing you and fall into my arms
once again. That, that, is what
repentance is all about. There is no
such thing as a fixed, “closed loop” universe that leaves you fresh out of
possibilities. There is only my good
creation, fallen but redeemed by my Son, Jesus Christ, so that every minute of
every hour of every day presents you with a chance to start all over again. That is what repentance looks like!
And that
is the life we’ve all been given through the grace of our baptism into Jesus
Christ, our incorporation into the life, death and resurrection of the One who
saves us from whatever seems to hem us in and cut off all our possibilities.
So here’s
the kicker: just as we can mess up the
lives of our youngest children, we can also enrich and bless those lives
immeasurably. What we do for the youngest
children of God, to plant and nurture a living faith in them is more
foundational, more far-reaching than all the ways we fail our children. We have a chance, every day, to pass on to
our children—all our children!—the best thing we have—and the best we have is
Jesus!
Into
that life, that full, free, overflowing baptismal life, we are privileged to
launch little Bryce today. Here you all
are: Moe and Messiah, together under one
roof. And believe me, I know you didn’t
show up just because you heard the bishop was going to be here this morning.
No, you
showed up because you wanted to be here for the best day in Bryce Beery’s young
life! You wanted to see, with your own
eyes, the way that God bursts through sin, death and the power of the devil in
the renewing Word and the refreshing Water of Holy Baptism.
This
morning the God of freedom and the future will get a toe-hold in Bryce’s
life. God calls dibs on baby Bryce—just
as God has called dibs on all of us who’ve been joined to Christ through water
and the Word.
Which
means for us (and in a few moments, for dear little Bryce)…it means that none
of those awful-awfuls have a future with us.
Sin and us, death and us, the Devil and us—none of those awful-awfuls
have a ghost of a chance with us, once God joins us to Christ in baptism.
We
forget that, of course, just as Bryce will forget it. That’s why you’re all here to promise to
keep him from forgetting it, to remind him of his baptism. Wow!
This little guy won’t have a chance to go astray—not with all you folks
watching him like hawks (the way I hope you keep watch over all the baptized!)
But if
somehow, Bryce tries to step out of line (and Michael and Lisa, I’m pretty sure
that WILL happen, sure as shooting!)….if Bryce goes astray, no (let’s be
honest) when Bryce goes astray,
he will find himself not on some dead-end street, devoid of options…
No, he
will find himself right where Baptism places all of us: in the strong, gentle arms of God who says to
us all: “It doesn’t have to end this
way. I am the God of endless fresh
starts. Turn away from what is tearing you down….turn toward me, and live!”
In the
name of Jesus. Amen.
[1] Nicholas
Kristof and Sheryl WaDunn, “The Way to Beat Poverty,” New
York Times (September 14, 2014).
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