Installation of Pastor Hope Deutscher
January 12, 2014
Matthew 3:13-17
Think back to a time in your life when you were the
dirtiest you have ever been--when you were the dustiest, sootiest, muddiest you
could imagine yourself every being.
I grew up on a farm in southern Minnesota, and farms
are places where it’s easy to get dirty—on a regular basis, in fact.
One of the dirtiest jobs I remember was when we sold
our stored soybeans—often in the heat of summertime, eight or nine months after
harvest. I remember climbing into a
hot, dusty grain bin….scooping the grain into the chute in the bottom of the
bin that fed the augur that took the grain up into the truck we used to haul
our harvest to the elevator in our little town.
The dust hung in the air and it clung to us, mixed
with our own sweat, as we scooped and swept out each bin of soybeans.
We were so dirty—my mom, my dad and I—that we
actually needed a pre-wash of sorts….we needed to hose ourselves down outdoors,
lest we drag all that dirt into the bath tub in the house.
And even then, when we’d gotten the worst of the
dirt off us outdoors, the bath water could get pretty nasty….which was bad news
for whoever drew the short straw and was the last in line to use that bathwater…because
in our modest farm home we took turns “getting clean” in water that we shared.
It’s pretty bad when bathwater gets so dirty that
you’re not sure if you’ll come out of it any cleaner than when you went into
it!
Hold
that image, please, and look again at this gospel
reading for today, the Baptism of our Lord.
Jesus comes from Galilee to the Jordan river—a river
that was hardly clean to begin with, a river made even dirtier by all the
sinners who were flocking out to hear John’s preaching and to be baptized by
him, to wash their guilt and regret and mistakes and waywardness—to wash it all
away.
When Jesus showed up by the Jordan, something in
John knew it was all wrong. And he gave
voice to his apprehension: “Wait a
minute, Jesus. You don’t belong here,
and you certainly shouldn’t be the one getting washed by a miserable sinner
like me. By rights ‘I need to be baptized by you,
and do you come to me?’ This is
all wrong—there is nothing right, nothing righteous in you, Jesus, getting
soiled, stained by the accumulated filth in this river!”
But Jesus just brushed away all that kind of talk. “You’ve got this ‘righteousness’ business all
wrong, John! ‘Righteousness’ isn’t
about possessing some kind of pristine purity—it’s not about keeping your
distance from those who are dirty with sin.
No—righteousness is about making others right, right with God, right
with one another, right with the good creation. I need to be here, John, in the Jordan
River, dirty as it is. ‘Let it be so now; for it is proper for us
in this way to fulfill all righteousness.’”
So Jesus who’s clean as a hound’s tooth—Jesus who
bears no sin of his own—Jesus insists on falling into line with all those
sinners who came out to the Jordan to be washed by John the Baptist.
Jesus brings no sin, no dirt to the river….but he
comes out of the river just covered in sin, covered by the dirt of
others….because that is what he came
for.
So it’s entirely right and proper that here—precisely here where sin and guilt and
regret are all most palpable and real—it’s the perfect time for an epiphany, a “revealing”
to take place as Jesus hears these words:
“"This—this sin-identifying, sin-embracing, sin-removing One--this
is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased."
God in Christ never keeps a safe distance from
sinners. No-- God in Christ goes right
toward sinners, gets close to sinners, so close that their sin rubs off on
him. That’s how it began at the River
Jordan, and that’s how it would be throughout Jesus’ time on earth, and that’s
how it would all end for him—on a sinner’s cross, where Jesus who (in Paul’s
words) “became sin,” crucified sin once and for all—doing away
with it for good—“so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (II Corinthians 5:21)
Pastor Hope, I was so excited when I realized you’d
be installed today, as we remember the Baptism of Our Lord, because this
amazing gospel story is what pastoral ministry is all about—and, I think it’s
what Living Grace Lutheran Church is all about.
A church is not a haven for the holy.
A church is not a fortress for the righteous.
A church is a hospital for the sick, a forgiving,
healing place for persons who know their hands are empty, folks who realize
they can do nothing to get on God’s good side, that they stand before God
“guilty as charged.”
The church is not where we escape from, where we run
from sin and sinners. The church is
where God the Beloved Son does what he does best—runs toward sinners, embraces
sinners, forgives sinners, transforms sinners into new creations, and sends
those redeemed, now righteous sinners into his royal service in the world.
Living Grace exists because there are in Hawley,
Minnesota believers who get it—that God loves sinners unconditionally, that Jesus
came to “take on sin,” and that a church worthy of his name will always open
its arms to everyone, and I mean everyone, absolutely everyone!
Lately, no one has been giving voice to this vision
of the church better than this amazing new pope, Francis. In late November he released his first major
encyclical, appropriately titled The Joy of the Gospel, in which Pope
Francis laid bare his evangelical heart and set forth his approach to the
mission of God in our world.
Francis wrote:
"I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it
has been out on the streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from being
confined and from clinging to its own security….I do not want a church
concerned with being at the center and then ends up by being caught up in a web
of obsessions and procedures….More than by fear of going astray, my hope is
that we will be moved by the fear of remaining shut up within structures which
give us a false sense of security, within rules which make us harsh judges, within
habits which make us feel safe, while at our door people are starving and Jesus
does not tire of saying to us, 'Give them something to eat.'"[1]
So, Pastor Hope, that’s what it’s all about. No one shows us the way better than Jesus
our Lord. See where he locates himself
here in this gospel lesson.
Jesus takes his place among sinners. Jesus gets close to people who are lost,
needing direction. Jesus associates
with the dirty, the dregs of this life.
Conventional wisdom says that “one bad apple spoils
the whole bunch”—and yes, if we were responsible for the produce section of the
local grocery store, we’d need to heed that warning on a daily basis.
But
God calls you to tend people, not produce. And in the amazing grace and abounding mercy
of God another wisdom holds stray: One Good
Apple transforms the whole bunch….and the good apple I’m talking about is
Jesus.
For Jesus “takes on” sin in order to undo sin, to
take it away, to bear it to his Cross and Grave for you and me and all sinners
everywhere.
This is the Jesus whom you serve and whose
forgiving, cleansing Word and presence you now bear as pastor of this faith
community.
So walk in this Hawley community and move within
this congregation as a sign and ambassador of the One who went down under the
water of John’s baptism in the muddy Jordan River. Get close to sinners—rub elbows with them
every chance you get—and tell them, better yet show them, this Jesus who takes on sin in order to take away sin
from us—as far as the east is from the west.
And then set them free to become signs and
ambassadors of this Jesus, wherever they go.
For Jesus never saves us to make us fat and sassy and content with
ourselves. Jesus always saves us to send
us into his great mission of redeeming and blessing all people and the whole
creation. Help and guide and encourage
these folks and all who will come here simply to live in the grace that has
found them.
In
the name of Jesus. Amen.
[1] As
reported by USA Today at http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/11/26/pope-francis-poverty/3759005/
No comments:
Post a Comment