Testing Our Mettle

Zion Lutheran Church, Twin Valley, MN
February 26, 2012
Lent 1/Mark 1:9-15
Installation of Pr. Anne Pairan

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

Mark the gospel writer likes to keep things moving right along—he writes in a lean style that is always short and to the point.

So while Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels give us similar, but longer and more elaborate versions of the story of Jesus’ temptation, Mark wraps it up in just 34 words—the length of a Facebook update.

But even so, Mark conveys to us, in dramatic, strong language the core of this story sandwiched between Jesus’ baptism and his first sermon….and for our purposes we can further reduce it to three words I want to explore with you:   wilderness, temptation, and angels.

The Spirit, in the form of a dove, descends on Jesus when he is baptized in the Jordan River…conveying God’s blessing and power….but suddenly the scene shifts.  

The Spirit, who at first is a sign of peace and favor, suddenly becomes Jesus’ taskmaster.  “And the Spirit immediately drove [Jesus] out into the wilderness…” (v. 12)

When you and I hear the word “wilderness,” we probably think of the northwoods of our great state, perhaps the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.   We hear “wilderness” and we probably smile and dream of a time and place away from the hustle and bustle of work and commitments.   “Wilderness” is a place to retreat and renew and rebuild our scattered lives.

But this is not the wilderness that the Spirit drove Jesus into.   In the Bible, the wilderness is most likely a dry, god-forsaken desert area.   It is a place of danger, where you could easily lose your life to the scorching heat, thirst or wild beasts.

Most importantly, the wilderness is about extreme loneliness.  In the Hebrew language, the word for “wilderness” means, roughly, “word-less.”   Wilderness is devoid of human contact, it’s where you are utterly alone with your dark fears and morbid doubts.   Wilderness is to be avoided at all costs.

The Spirit of God drives the newly-baptized Jesus into the wilderness….which is to say:  the Spirit takes Jesus to that place where we all spend some time during our lives—a place of questioning and deep anxiety and utter extremity—a place where no one, not even God, seems to be present.

And what happens to Jesus in the wilderness?   He does not just go there for a quick overnight in a sleeping bag and a cozy tent; Jesus stays there 40 days, which is a biblical way of saying “a good long time.”    Jesus is in the wilderness 40 days, and he is not in a protective cocoon—Jesus is “with the wild beasts.”

But what chiefly happens to Jesus during his 40 days in the wilderness, with the wild beasts, is that he is tempted by Satan.

We tend to misunderstand this idea of temptation, mainly because we have trivialized it.   We’ve frittered away the idea of being tempted because we assume it has something to do with falling off our diet, or tipping the bottle too much, or cheating on a spouse, or getting your hand caught in the cookie jar.   Temptation is a great National Enquirer headline word—it is, too often, the stuff of juicy gossip.

But in the biblical worldview, and in the language of Christian faith and life, temptation is always about something broader, deeper and more dangerous.   Martin Luther in his Small Catechism explanation to the Sixth Petition of the Lord’s Prayer—“Lead us not into temptation”—has this to say:  “God tempts no one to sin, but we ask in this prayer that God would watch over us and keep us so that the devil, the world, and our sinful self may not deceive us and draw us into false belief, despair, and other great and shameful sins.  And we pray that even though we are so tempted we may still win the final victory.”   

What does it mean to be tempted?   Temptation is about something far, far worse than falling off your diet or reneging on your no-smoking pledge.   Temptation is about doubting your God-given, God-claimed identity.  Temptation for Jesus in the parched wilderness was about being distracted from his mission, side-tracked on his path to the Cross, for us and for our salvation.

So what we need to picture here is a battle royal out in the wilderness.   Satan, whose name means “adversary,” assaults Jesus repeatedly over the course of a forty day period.   Mark doesn’t give us a blow-by-blow account, but maybe that’s OK.  Mark’s narrative leaves a lot to our imaginations, and perhaps that helps us identify with Jesus all the more.

Because we, too, have our own “good long times” in the wilderness of doubt and despair.   You and I also are pressed to the max, pinned to the wall, by all the “wouldas, couldas, shouldas”—all the ways we doubt ourselves and despair of trusting that God is with us.

This is where the Spirit drives our Lord Jesus….into the wilderness, with the wild beasts, to be attacked and assailed by his adversary for days that stretched into weeks that extended beyond a month:  Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness—which we ponder at the start of our 40 days of Lent.

What was God up to here?   Why did the Spirit “drive” Jesus into the wilderness?     What good, if any, did this episode do in the longer narrative of Mark’s gospel?

Richard Swanson, a seminary classmate of mine who teaches the Bible at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, encourages us to think of temptation as testing.[1]  

Swanson asks:  What if “the satan,” the adversary here is someone who actually serves God’s purposes?

There is a biblical precedent for this possibility, in the Old Testament Book of Job.  In the first chapter of Job, Satan is pictured among the heavenly beings in God’s royal court.   God allows Satan to test the genuineness of Job’s faith by permitting misfortunes to fall upon Job.

Professor Swanson wonders whether the satan is sort of like a building inspector, whose job it is to make sure that a building has been constructed “straight and true.”   The tempter who is really a tester, takes the full measure of Jesus’ faith and trust, for the sake of all the challenges that lay ahead of him, culminating in the greatest challenge of them all:  the Cross.

So what is the outcome of Jesus’ forty days of testing in the wilderness?   Mark doesn’t come out and tell us, exactly, but there are two things we do know.   First, Jesus was “waited on” by angels.   God’s heavenly messengers are dispatched, like waiters in a restaurant, to see to Jesus’ needs in the wilderness.    This place of utter desolation and loneliness isn’t finally bereft of God’s presence, God’s care, God’s keeping.   Jesus may be the only human being in sight—but angels are present, serving him.

Second, we know that Jesus didn’t succumb in his 40 days in the wilderness.   Jesus doesn’t die in the desert.   He comes through this wretched time of testing, and he takes up his calling to announce God’s Reign over all things:  “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

These are the words of Someone who knows whereof he speaks.   Jesus has seen God’s word, God’s will and God’s ways attacked—but God has not been defeated.   Satan, the adversary, is no match for the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This whole story, brief as it is, has a biblical rhythm to it.   Jesus is reliving the story of ancient Israel, God’s chosen people who escaped through their “baptism” in the Red Sea, were tested for 40 years in the Wilderness of Sinai, and emerged eventually to enter the Promised Land and live out their days as a sign of God’s glorious and gentle rule over all things.

This whole story, brief as it is, has stamped itself on our lives, as well.    There is a divine template here that reminds us of the rhythm that marks our lives as well.

Our Baptism into Christ doesn’t place us under a protective bubble.   Rather, our Baptism leads us into wilderness times and desert places where we feel dry and bereft, often for a “good long time”—abandoned by our neighbors, seemingly forsaken even by God.  

But God is never absent from such times of temptation.   God uses the adversity that comes to us to “test our mettle” and refine our faith, more precious than gold.

Pastor Anne, you are called to do what angels do best:  to be a messenger of God’s faithful, saving presence to these people, when their faith is under fire, their trust in God tested.  

When they are in the wilderness, serve these folks the same life-giving Word of God that sustained our Lord Jesus in the desert.   Proclaim to them the nearness of God’s Kingdom, God’s gentle and glorious rule over all things, in Christ Jesus.  Amen.

---

[1] Richard W. Swanson, Provoking the Gospel of Mark (Pilgrim, 2005) pp. 133-136.

Making Contact

Salem Lutheran Church, Hitterdal

Epiphany 5/February 12, 2012

Mark 1:40-45

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

There’s a lot going on here in this story from Mark chapter one, and (at first blush) not all of it makes sense.

Jesus is on a whirlwind tour through Galilee, which we might think of as that portion of Minnesota north of Highway 2.  Jesus was hitting mainly small towns not unlike Hitterdal.   Which isn’t a surprise because except for a couple of trips to Jerusalem Jesus was mainly a rural and small-town guy.  And that’s fine because wherever you go, you’ll encounter persons who reflect the whole gamut of human experience—warts and all.

So, speaking of warts, this leper comes to Jesus, and that in itself is a problem.  Because lepers in Jesus’ day were supposed to stay put, in their place, outside the normal traffic patterns of life.   The community couldn’t risk contamination by those with skin conditions that rendered them unclean.   The rabbis considered healing of leprosy to be about as unlikely as raising the dead.

So if you’re a leper, you’re one of “Walking Dead,” and the wider community prefers that you don’t do much walking. 

But not this leper.  He walked, he left the leper compound, he refused to stay hidden from others, he ventured forth and found Jesus.

And the first words out of the leper’s mouth tell us that he’d been paying attention to the news about Jesus.  “If you choose, you can make me clean,” he said, kneeling at Jesus’ feet. 

In the request itself there’s a hint that the leper knows he can press this only so far—“if you choose,”

“Jesus, you can just say it, or maybe even just think it, and I will be cleansed.   You don’t need to gaze on my disfigurement, you surely don’t need to touch me; just choose, and I will be well.”

But Jesus doesn’t do doctoring at arm’s length.   If the leper made the first move, Jesus—almost reflexively—completes the journey by reaching out and doing something he never should have done:  touching the leper’s uncleanness.

This, too, is astonishing.   If not downright illegal under Jewish laws, Jesus certainly was expressing a reckless disregard for all the taboos that kept his community intact.   A preacher I know once declared that Jesus performed two miracles here.  The second miracle was the cleansing of the leper.  But the first miracle was Jesus’ touching of the leper’s diseased skin.

Jesus breaks the taboo because he is “moved with pity.”  Jesus hurts in his gut for this pitiful man.   Some ancient manuscripts use another word, connoting anger, not pity.   Jesus was angry, Jesus was indignant against all the dark forces that keep people enslaved.

Either way, the result is the same, because Jesus is in the freedom business.  Jesus came to liberate persons, and the best way to set an unclean leper free isn’t just to think kind thoughts about the leper, but to stretch out your hand and break through the barrier and make contact with the untouchable.  That’s how you defy a skin disease for which the community believed quarantine was the only protective measure.

So Jesus sets aside all the “rules and regs,” all the laws about leprosy, by taking on the man’s uncleanness and thus sweeping away his uncleanness, setting this man free.

Jesus doesn’t flinch at breaking the law, if it means one of God’s children can be turned loose….

….and then, in the next breath, Jesus the lawbreaker commands the leper to go and keep the law:  “Go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded…”

Break the law one minute; keep the law the next.  What gives here?  Is Jesus a little “schizo” when it comes to the law?

No, not really.  Because Jesus is in the freedom business, remember?   And sometimes you have to break a law to set someone free, while other times it’s the law itself that allows justice and mercy to roll down like mighty waters.

Here’s what I think Jesus was up to.   The community protected itself against leprosy by isolating lepers.   You don’t so much treat the leper as you guard the community.   And just as leprosy couldn’t be self-diagnosed (you can read all about it in Leviticus 14!), being cleansed from leprosy wasn’t something that you could unilaterally declare for yourself.

Jesus wanted this leper to be 100% free, and that meant being returned completely, to the community from which he had been expelled…..and the way to do that was for the leper to “obey the law,” be pronounced leprosy-free by the priest, and offer up a sacrifice that thanked God for healing and “sealed the deal.”

Jesus broke the law to free the leper, just as he commanded the leper to keep the law, also to free the leper.  Law-breaking or law-keeping:  it’s all about freedom.

The Law can never save us, but it can keep us alive long enough for our Savior to save us.  The key here is:  what makes for freedom?   Do we obey the law for the Law’s sake?  No.  But that doesn’t mean that the Law doesn’t sometimes serve the cause of freedom.

OK, we’re in the home stretch now.  

But there’s one last twist in this strange story.   As Jesus commands the leper to keep the laws regarding re-entry into his community, Jesus lays a harsh gag-order on him:  “See that you say nothing to anyone…”

Here, this leper is having the best day of his life, and Jesus wants him to keep mum about it.  That would never wash nowadays.  The leper would have fired off a Tweet or a Facebook update before Jesus could hush him.  

And it didn’t work in Mark’s story, either.   Jesus, who was 100% effective as a leper-healer, had no success putting the kibosh on what now came out of the former leper’s lips.   “But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word…”   Ironically, the leper was such an effective evangelist, that Jesus now had to restrict his own travel plans!

Students of the Bible puzzle over why Jesus tried to muzzle the leper.  I think it’s mainly because Jesus didn’t want people to go gaa-gaa over signs and wonders before he got to the greatest Sign and Wonder of them all:  the Cross and the Empty Tomb.

But for now, let’s just say that God’s powerful, passionate love overflowed so completely through Jesus, that sometimes it even caught him off guard.   Jesus couldn’t keep some folks from singing, because freedom will do that to you!

And the same strong, future-opening love of God in Christ just keeps overflowing, into and through lives, too.    This morning we witness that as a miracle unfolds right here, in just a few moments.

Little Courtney is no leper—far from it.  Everyone wants to touch her and hold her.   She’s the toast of the town, and for good reason.

But Courtney does need what Jesus intends to do for her today.   She needs to be set free, just as all of us need to be set free.  

Although you have probably noticed little evidence of her sinfulness, Ingrid and Dane, this will change soon enough.   She will soon learn to speak and I predict that some of her favorite words will be “me, myself and mine.”   She is under your protective care right now, but as soon as she goes out in the world there will be persons eager to lead her astray.   And even though she is the picture of health and life this morning, she is not immortal.

All of which is to say:  Courtney is like all the rest of us.  She is a human child, captive to sin, death and the power of the devil.

But, here’s the good news! Jesus is here.  Jesus is “calling dibs” on Courtney.  Jesus is going to set her free this morning with water and a Word to which she’ll be able to return, every day, for as long as God gives her life.

And in saying all this about precious little Courtney, I hope you know that I’m saying it about you and me and everyone else whom God is calling to faith.   Enslaved to thinking the world revolves around us, captivated by forces that would lead us astray, in bondage to mortality….we are prime targets for Jesus, the freedom-bringer.

Jesus reaches across all boundaries and touches, indeed takes on our uncleanness.  Jesus turns us loose from the Evil One, even in the valley of the shadow of death.  

And Jesus liberates us so compellingly, that we can’t keep quiet about it…just as I hope and pray that her baptism into Christ will become something that Courtney never grows tired of hearing about and spreading abroad, all the days of her life.

And so may the same be said for all of us who have been set free by Jesus our Lord.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

From Slavery to Freedom

Where Are You Leading Us, Lord?  From Slavery to Freedom

Bishop’s Bible Study on the Exodus

Dedicated to Dr. Darold Beekmann and in memory of his wife Marlene who died on December 21, 2011.

“‘A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous….”  Deuteronomy 26:5

The journey that began with God’s call to Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 12—last month’s Bible study) continued in the adventures of their children, Isaac and Rebekah, and their descendants—Jacob (later named Israel) and his twelve sons.    These rich stories form the fabric of the Book of Genesis.

When we come to the Bible’s second book, Exodus, the worm has turned.   At the end of Genesis, famine had forced the Jacob’s family to leave the scarcity in Canaan for the abundance in Egypt—abundance which reflected, in part, the faithful stewardship of Jacob’s son Joseph, who rose from imprisoned slave to become second-in-command in the royal court of the Pharaoh.  (I once heard Joseph described as history’s first “Secretary of Agriculture,” who conceived of the idea of the ever-normal granary in which crops are stored in good years, to tide over the hungry in the lean years.)

The word “Exodus” means “the way out.”    Although we rightly associate the Book of Exodus with the compelling figure of Moses (its primary human actor) and the astounding escape from Egypt (the ten plagues and the wondrous crossing of the Red Sea), the book is primarily about God’s continuing journey with his people.   “Where are you leading us, Lord?” wasn’t just the question of Abraham and Sarah; it continued to animate the conversation God’s people had with their traveling Lord and Leader.

“When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression.”  Deuteronomy 26:6-7

This part of the journey starts with God’s remembering of his people.   The journey we’re on with God includes times of trial and tribulation—harsh treatment and affliction.  God does not shield us from hard labor or oppression.   But also, God does not forget us when we are down.   Exodus 2:23-25 notes:  “After a long time the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery, and cried out. Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God. God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.”

Israel groaned.   God heard.   And God remembered his promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  Notice the verbs and the intimate interaction between God and his people.

Darold Beekmann was my first bishop when I became a pastor over 30 years ago.  He was steeped in the scriptures.  After graduating from Wartburg Seminary he did graduate study in Old Testament at Union Theological Seminary in New York.  I have never forgotten Bishop Beekmann’s observation on Exodus 2:23ff:  “When God remembers, things happen.”   When God remembers, it’s not for nostalgia’s sake.   When God remembers, God acts to save his people.

“The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm….”   Deuteronomy 26:8a

To accomplish this rescue God calls forth the unlikely leadership of Moses, God oppresses the oppressor (Pharaoh) with ten uncanny demonstrations of power, God opens a path through the sea for Israel to escape—and for Pharaoh’s army to be annihilated.    These are the familiar stories of Exodus we’ve treasured from years of Sunday School or VBS lessons, not to mention epic movies like Cecil B. DeMille’s classic, The Ten Commandments (1956), or more recently, The Prince of Egypt (1998).

But what I want us not to lose sight of is the fact that all of this—the saga of Moses and the razzle-dazzle of the Escape—was part of a larger journey God was again taking with his beloved people.   Exodus means “the way out,” –and that way out involved a forty-year journey through the wilderness of Sinai to the banks of the Jordan River.

Here’s what may not add up for us, though.   It’s less than six hundred miles from the Nile delta (in Egypt) to the banks of the Jordan River (east of Jerusalem).   Even with a company of well over 600,000 travelers (Exodus 12:37), it didn’t have to take forty years to complete that trek!   This four-decades-long journey was about more, much more, than “getting there.”   

The Book of Exodus narrates Israel’s foundational salvation-history.  Read the whole book, if you will.  But for now, let me lift up four themes that emerge Exodus—themes that speak powerfully to our own life as God’s journeying people in the 21^st century:

1.   No turning back.   Almost immediately after they escaped from Pharaoh and his army, the children of Israel started grumbling and pining for the good life they left behind in Egypt.  How quickly they forgot the oppression of their task-masters!   Just six weeks after escaping from Pharaoh, “the Israelites said to [Moses and Aaron], ‘If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.’”  Exodus 16:3

Again and again the children of Israel grumbled, and again and again they had to re-learn a hard lesson:  the supposedly “greener grass” back in Egypt wasn’t all that green, and there would be no turning back.   It’s as if the Israelites had contracted a perverse sort of amnesia! 

God had orchestrated their escape from slavery, and God would never allow them to sacrifice their freedom.  God had a preferred future for the children of Israel, and God was going to take them to it.   God’s goal for his people was nothing short of the Promised Land.

What about us?   When the going gets tough in our faith-communities, do we sometimes pine for a golden age in the past?  Do we allow nostalgia, for an era that will not return, to prevent us from doing God’s work today and moving forward into God’s tomorrow?

2.  Faith for now, bread for today.   When the Israelites bewailed their hunger, God gave them unexpected food—a wondrous bread from heaven they called “manna” (literally “what is it?” in the Hebrew language, Exodus 16:15).  Every morning there was enough manna to get God’s people through another day.  

If anyone tried to hoard this amazing bread for more than one day, though, it became infested with worms.   “Leftover” manna went bad.   God insisted on leading and feeding his people, but only in a day-by-day way.   And this went on for all forty years of their journey to the Promised Land (Exodus 16:35).   It was as if God said:  “Don’t worry about your future.  That is in my hands.  Trust in me today.”    

We echo the experience of the Israelites when we pray, as Jesus taught us:  “Give us today our daily bread.”   But is that enough for us?   Are we not, even as the church, constantly tempted to secure our future?   How can we live in the trust that God holds us and sustains us—God gives us whatever we need, but on a “one day at a time” basis?

3.  God is with us for the long haul.   Although we associate the Israelites’ time at Mt Sinai with the giving of the Ten Commandments, it was a promise that first grabbed them by the ears.   “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…” Exodus 20:2.  This was God’s first word from the mountaintop.   God committed himself unreservedly, unalterably, to being in relationship with his chosen people.   God’s gracious decision for Israel called forth their answering response of faith, hope and love—which is still the basis for our whole life with God and with one another.

Here too is a call that constantly comes to the 21^st century church.   In our well-meaning efforts to serve faithfully and effectively, we can start thinking that the church is our “project.”   But it’s not!   The church is always God’s gratuitous gift to us and to the world, grounded in God’s fierce determination to be our God--to keep announcing God’s promises that establish us, sustain us, and move us forward in God’s mission.   God is with us for the long haul, and that is enough!

4.  The journey transforms both the people and their God.  A lot can happen during forty years of traveling--as we read about in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.  The journey made a deep and enduring impression on God’s people; it solidified their identity as a nation. 

But as often happens in long family trips, the travelers got on each other’s nerves.   The Israelites complained repeatedly, lost faith, and stretched God’s patience to the breaking point.   In Exodus 32, following the golden calf incident at Mt. Sinai, God was ready to wipe out the Israelites and start fresh just with Moses and his offspring—to make of them a new “chosen people” (Exodus 32:10).   But Moses argued persuasively with God, on behalf of the people of Israel (read about it in Exodus 32:11-13).  “And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people,” (Exodus 32:14).

The Book of Exodus, along with other portions of the Old Testament, challenges the notion that God is impassive or aloof—an Unmoved Mover (as the philosopher Aristotle liked to say).   Rather, God is intimately connected with, and related to, the people of his choosing.  God affects his people, and the people affect God.  In the depth of this relationship--slowly over time—the children of Israel learned the rudiments of trust.   They were transformed by God’s giving, guiding, chastening hand.

This month, on Ash Wednesday--February 22, we will begin another Lenten season.  For forty days (an echo of the forty years’ journey of the Exodus) we’ll reflect anew on God’s grace toward us, God’s chastening of us, and the journey God is taking us on, with our Lord Jesus Christ.   Use this Lenten season to ponder your own congregation’s journey with God, how that journey has been transforming you, and where God is leading you.   Consider using the synod resource,  Lent 2012:  A Season for Prayer and Renewal, Seeking a New Vision for our Congregation’s Purpose in God’s Mission available at http://nwmnsynod.org/assets/documents/resources/Lent-2012-resource.pdf?utm_source=January+25%2C+2012+-+NWMN+Synod+eNews&utm_campaign=Northern+Lights%3A+Jan+2012&utm_medium=email.

Journeying with you in Christ,

Bishop Larry Wohlrabe

Northwestern Minnesota Synod
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
God’s work.  Our hands.

For reflection or group discussion:

1.      “Bringing good out of evil,” is a theme we encounter throughout the Bible.  How do you see God bringing good out of evil in the Exodus story?   In your story?   In your congregation’s story?
2.      Why is it so tempting to get lost in nostalgia for a “golden age” in the past?   How does such nostalgia sometimes keep you or your congregation from moving ahead, into God's future?
3.      How are you (or your congregation) learning to trust God, one day at a time?
4.      As a disciple of Jesus, what difference does it make to know that the church is God’s gracious gift—not our human “project?”
5.      What is one way you and/or your congregation, during Lent 2012, might ponder the question:  “Where are you leading us, Lord?”

This is the second in a series of monthly Bible studies during 2012 focused on the question:  “Where Are You Leading Us, Lord?”   These columns are designed to equip the disciples and leadership groups such as church councils, for faithful and fruitful ministry.   Feel free to use the column for personal reflection or group discussion, e.g. church council meeting devotions/discussion.

Jesus Takes On Sin

Baudette Lutheran Parish (Clementson, First and Wabanica)

January 8, 2012/ The Baptism of Our Lord

Mark 1:4-11

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

This first Sunday after the Epiphany always wakes me up—rather rudely!—in much the way a cup of overly-caffeinated coffee might jolt me out of my holiday slumbers. 

Christmas always concludes too quickly, with the season of Epiphany knocking on our doors….and Lent not that far behind.

1.      Why, most of us haven’t even gotten all our Christmas decorations “down” yet!  And yet today the Baby Jesus has suddenly grown into an adult.   We’d rather linger longer at the manger, with the Christ Child in swaddling clothes….but the church’s calendar forces us to see him as a full-grown man, who shaves and is making his way in the world.

It’s as if someone hit the “fast forward” button on the DVD player, making thirty years of Jesus’ life disappear just like that.

What a caffeine jolt to our systems!  

And yet, it’s probably a good thing.  For the fast pace, especially of Mark’s gospel, obliges us to remember that God in Christ assumed human flesh, not to make small talk with us, not to have a picnic or a joyride, but to get on the road and make his way toward the Cross, for us and for our salvation.

If the season of Epiphany is about the meaning of that word (Epiphany)—a revealing, a drawing back of the curtain about Jesus….this first jolt reveals something magnificent and world-turning:   that the Word became flesh not for beating-around-the-bush….but for the sake of doing vital business with us, rescuing humanity and renewing the whole creation.

2.      But there’s a second “jolt” in this morning’s gospel lesson—a second “shock to the system” that wakes us up.   Jesus doesn’t just come on the scene a grown-up adult.   He comes to the River Jordan to be baptized.

 The “jolt” in this is that baptism is for sinners.   Baptism is a washing-away of filth and dirt, a cleansing from sin.  Baptism is for the desperate, the lost, the god-forsaken!

Baptism is for sinners.   And Jesus is no sinner.

The second “jolt” this morning’s gospel lesson administers to us is that it shows us the one, the only person who has ever lived who doesn’t need baptism…and yet he comes to be baptized:  “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.”

And there’s nothing “accidental” about this.   Jesus fully plans to be here, up to his neck in the muddy water, with all the sinners who flocked to John the baptizer.

Jesus insisted on getting in line with everybody else, to receive “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

What jolts us here is that Jesus isn’t the least bit shy about getting “up close and personal” with all manner of sinners.  Jesus isn’t worried about being caught in the wrong crowd.  Jesus seems to have no interest in keeping himself above the fray, unstained by contact with the ungodly.

Here, once more, we receive an epiphany, a revelation about who Jesus is and what he does.   Jesus befriends sinners.   Jesus gets close to sinners.    Jesus, we can say, even “takes on” sin.

Here’s a little image that might help.   During the recent holiday season, I washed a lot of dishes.   We hosted a staff party and family. Dirty dishes piled up, and so I spent some time at the kitchen sink.

When you’re washing a lot of dishes, the water can get pretty grungy.  In fact, you reach a point where a dish going into the water might come out dirtier than it was to begin with.

I picture the Jordan River like that.   It was literally a muddy river….but it got even dirtier with all those sins being washed away.      

But Jesus came to this dirty water and intentionally insisted that he be washed in it….even though he probably came up out of the water, dirtier than when he went in.   Because the sins of others--the sins of the whole world--were now clinging to him.

St Paul takes this whole notion as far as he can in II Corinthians when he writes:  “for our sake [God] made him (Christ) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  (II Cor. 5:21)

3.      And this leads me to the third jolt we get in this gospel lesson:  Jesus gets baptized with sinners, Jesus “takes on” the filth of sin in the muddy river, and God lets it be known how pleased he is with that!

In a way, this is the sharpest jolt of all.  It’s surprising to see Baby Jesus all grown up, even though we still have the manger scene set up in our house.  It’s shocking to see this adult Jesus getting baptized with all those sinners.

But what defies all our customary ways of understanding God is that God looks upon this baptism scene and smiles broadly.   God is utterly pleased with what is happening as his beloved Son “takes on” sin in the Jordan River. 

God wants it this way.

And we see that here in three ways.   First, God himself “tears open” the heavens.   It’s a jarring word in the original Greek—“schizo” (related to “schizophrenia”).  God rips the heavens apart.  God makes a deliberate tear, a permanent opening in the veil that separates heaven from earth.   There is no turning back from this!  This tearing-apart of the heavens signals a new state of affairs.  Indeed, it is an overture to the New Creation God is initiating in Jesus.

Second, the Spirit of God descends like a dove on Jesus.   The same Spirit who “moved over the waters” in Genesis 1, the dove that Noah released from the ark—the dove that flew “over the waters” of the receding Flood--the Spirit and the dove come together as one, a powerful image of blessing.

And third, the Voice of God is heard, for the first time in Mark’s gospel:  “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

This is just how God wants it to be:  Jesus, doing vital business with humanity and the whole creation, Jesus taking on sin and rising from the water to begin his journey toward the Cross and the Grave, for us and for our salvation.   Capture that image—hang on to it.   This is what God has had in mind since before the first star began to twinkle.

For here, the most amazing epiphany, the greatest revelation, “shows itself” before our wondering eyes:  God knows how to do what we’re never all that sure about.  God knows how to deal with sinners.

Our natural inclination is to keep our distance from sinners--notorious, headline-grabbing sinners especially.   Someone messes up big time—and we turn away, we shun them, we keep them at arm’s length.   We avoid being tainted by them, “spoiled” by their manifest sinfulness.

But Jesus always made a bee-line toward sinners.    Jesus got close to, befriended, embraced sinners.    Not to roll around with them in the mud like a bunch of pigs, though.   Jesus didn’t “take on” our sin so that he might revel in sin with us.

No.   Jesus “took on” sin in order to “take on” sin, in the sense of defeating it, once and for all.  
Jesus “took on” sin but only so that he might “take away” sin.   We might say that Jesus captured sin, kidnapped sin, in order to bear it away from us, so that sin might no longer control us, have its way with us and kill us.

Jesus is head-over-heels in love with sinners, and that’s great news for all of us here this morning—a bunch of sinners, gathered together on January 8, 2012.

But just because Jesus loves sinners unconditionally, he does not love sin.  Jesus positively cannot stand our incurable obsession with ourselves.  Sin and Jesus have no future together.   One of them must go away,  disappear.   And that’s exactly what happened whenever, wherever Jesus encountered sin. He took it on in order to make it go away.

So Jesus cast out demons, healed sickness, rebuked the recalcitrant, and finally went to the Cross to nail sin onto that accursed Tree.   Jesus buried sin in his own Grave, to send our sin away from us forever, as far as the east is from the west.

But there’s even more.   This same Jesus who died to take our away our sins, rose again to pour out his Spirit upon the church—even as Jesus is making all things new.

And we get to be in on that action—with our Living Lord, reclaiming God’s whole creation, one sorry sinner at a time.  One broken relationship, one god-forsaken wanderer at a time.   God enlists us—forgiven sinners—to be part of that great rescuing action.

And that just might be the best “Epiphany jolt” of them all.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

The Light We've Been Waiting For

Kirkebo Lutheran of Perley, MN

Nora Lutheran of Gardner, ND

Advent 3/December 11, 2011

John 1:6-8, 19-28

The fact that we are in a thus-far “snowless” December is freaking some folks out.   Just the other day I was speaking with a friend, a fellow who is prone to SAD—seasonal affective disorder.   He was bummed that there isn’t snow on the ground yet.

Why? I asked (thinking that a break from the record snowfalls we’ve seen over the last few years isn’t all bad).   “Why do you miss the snow?” I asked my friend.

“It’s because the snow reflects light.  It makes the daytime brighter.   Right now it’s too brown, too dark out there for my soul.”

My friend has a point, of course, and maybe you share it.  We need light to live—to get around in the world.  Our bodies need light for good old Vitamin D, if nothing else.  Our eyes need light for them to work.  Our souls need light because God did not create us to be bottom-dwellers of the ocean, like those fish who live so far below the water’s surface that they don’t even have eyes.

We need light to live, pure and simple.

But there is a catch here.  Like so many other good things God has given to us, we need some but not too much.   If we utterly lack light, we die (in one way or another).

But too much light will kill us, too.

My mother, who passed away at age 93 this past July, was a Twin Cities girl transplanted to the family farm in southern Minnesota back during WWII.   She went from being an urban dweller to being a dirt farmer, helping my dad in virtually every aspect of farming.   My parents farmed at a time when no one was wearing sunscreen—when we weren’t conscious of the cancer-causing qualities of ultra-violet radiation.

So in her latter years, my mom—perhaps like some of you—had to make repeated visits to her dermatologist, to have a little slice of her beautiful face removed—little patches of skin cancer on her ears, her forehead, her cheekbones.

Light is good.   Without light we die. 

But with too much light, we also suffer and die.   Light is also bad.

So which will it be?  Is light good or bad?   The biblical witness is clear on this point—it always “sides” with light.   The scriptures that we treasure are not big on window-blinds, shades, curtains or sunscreen.   In our story of God, light is always something to be welcomed.

In fact, our faith consistently describes God in terms of Light—God is filled with Light.   God is always dispersing the darkness.  In the first epistle of St John we read:  “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all”  (I John 1:5).

So in today’s gospel lesson from the first chapter of St John’s Gospel we have John the Baptist.  Only, in this gospel (as opposed to Matthew’s, Mark’s or Luke’s gospels) John the Baptist isn’t so much a water-guy, as he is a light-guy.   The Fourth Gospel emphasizes John as a testimony-giver more than as a washer-away-of-sins.

John the Baptist, to be sure, was a pretty bright fellow.  No wallflower, he made a splash wherever he showed up.

And yet, to John’s credit, he knew his place.  John realized that he wasn’t the Light of God itself…but rather, he came to “testify to the light.”

There’s a reason why so many artistic portrayals of John the Baptist show him with his forefinger outstretched.  It’s because John was always a “pointer”….his finger was always directing the gaze of others toward Him who is the Light of God in this cold, dark world—Jesus Christ our Lord.

Friends, we have this gospel lesson before us in these Advent days because this Light is coming to us once again.   He who is the Light of the World is making tracks in our direction once again.

And, as always, he comes to us “in the bleak midwinter.”   Well that’s not exactly true.  Christmas doesn’t come in the middle of winter.  Rather, Christmas falls just a few days after what is technically the start of winter—the winter solstice, the shortest, most light-deprived day of the year.

In that winter darkness, when we wake up in the dark and come home from work in the dark, precisely when light is most scarce and therefore most precious, as the hymnwriters like to put it:  in the darkness of our sin, Jesus comes bearing light.

So, to give our own witness to that fact, we go a little nuts in Advent and at Christmas-time decorating our homes and workplaces in ways that spread the light of Christ.    This becomes the time of the year when I hope and I pray that the fire marshal will not visit the Wohlrabe home in north Moorhead, where Mrs. Wohlrabe (She Who Must Be Obeyed) goes a little overboard with the decorating.  She loves Christmas because so many of her decorations have her name on them (her name is Joy).   And she really loves Christmas lights and candles—and like a typical guy, I just hope we don’t knock over a burning candle or blow a circuit breaker or two and burn the whole place down.  Now THAT would be a light to behold!

But, all kidding aside, there are good reasons why we upper Midwestern “Luterans” crave the light right about now.  It’s because we know, deep down, that despite the perils of too much light, most of the time we never get enough of it.  We all have a touch of SAD—seasonal affective disorder.  We all crave the light.

And I think that’s because we know, deep down, that the light is good for us.  And the light of God that comes to us in Jesus Christ is the best Light there is—end of story!

This Light is always, always, always good for us—but not because it is always gentle with us or kind to us.  No, that’s not how it works.

The Light of God shines upon us and the first thing it always does is to expose us, to bring to light all the things that are making life miserable—all the things that are killing us.  Luther nicknamed them “sin, death and the power of the devil”—an evil trio!

God shines his light upon us, and at first we want to cover our eyes.  It’s a little like when the eye doctor dilates your pupils and shines that awful-bright light into your wide-open eyes, to see if your retina is A-OK (I know—I do that twice a year!)  It hurts like the dickens!

And God does that sort of thing to us as well.   God’s light exposes all the ways we’re pretty much “stuck on ourselves,” all the ways we imagine that the world revolves around us—what we call sin.   God’s light exposes how, even though we think we’re in control of ourselves, we’re not.   We’re prone to being led astray—we call that “the power of the devil.”   And God’s light forces our eyes to see how we do not possess life—how easily and swiftly life slips through our fingers.   We call that death.

The Light of God is good for us, but only because the first thing it does is diagnose us and confront us with all the things we’d rather keep under wraps, hidden in the darkness of our souls.

God’s Light in Christ forces all of those things out, into the bright light of day….not so God can hold them over us, but so that God can deal with that old nasty trio on our behalf.

God’s Light in Christ exposes what is wrong with us, so that it can reveal to us all the ways God in Jesus Christ is going to work to forgive sin, to defeat the power of the devil, and to put an end to death’s hold on us.

In Jesus, in the Baby who came at Christmas-time, God’s Light shone with a clarity and a power, the likes of which this world has never seen.   Jesus pulls back the curtain and puts the spotlight on who God is for us and what God graciously does for us:   ending sin’s stranglehold, sending the devil scurrying, depriving death of its stranglehold on our souls.

This is the Light John the Baptist came to point us toward.  This is the Light that is coming right toward us this Advent.

My dear friends, don’t flee from this light.  Embrace it.  Bask in its beauty.   Allow the Light of Jesus Christ to burn away all that needs to be discarded in your lives.  Let the Light of Christ shine as you decorate your homes—even if you risk getting a citation from the fire marshal!

For this is the Light we’ve been waiting for forever.

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.