"An Acceptable Time" - March 5, 2025 (Ash Wednesday)

 

II Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Ash Wednesday
March 5, 2025

 

“So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says,

‘At an acceptable time I have listened to you,
   and on a day of salvation I have helped you.’

See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”

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            I don’t advise anybody to seek out life-threatening situations.  I do advise everyone to be prepared, because they can sneak up on you.  Close encounters with mortality are inevitable.

            This past fall, I had a suspicious growth over my right eyebrow, though, right where I had to have a pre-cancerous spot removed a couple of years ago, so I saw my dermatologist.  She didn’t look too worried, but offered a choice.  She could either just freeze it off, or she could cut it off and do a biopsy.  I went with the biopsy option.  When the results came back, they told me I had a wart.  That creeped me out in its own way, but I felt a sense of relief that I had not expected to feel.  It was minor, but it was a reminder.

Ash Wednesday is an annual reminder: “One of these days, you’re going to die, so be prepared.”

            Most of us here tonight knew Jim Pierson.  For those who didn’t, he was a longtime member who died in 2021.  He would have been 100 this year.  In June of 1944, he was still a teenager when he found himself floating on a transport boat in the English Channel just off Normandy.  He would be part of the second day of the landings, and as I heard him tell the story of his life, it was during that 24-hour period of waiting that he really learned to pray – his words.  That time was well-spent.

            One of the prayers that is in the funeral service in the back of the Hymnal in front of you tonight asks,

“Speak to us once more

your solemn message of life and of death. 

Help us live as those who are prepared to die. 

And when our days here are accomplished,

enable us to die as those who go forth to live,

so that living or dying, our life may be in you…”[1]

 

Being prepared to die well, whenever it may happen, makes it possible for us to live well, as long as the Lord gives us, and then to move on to eternal life.

            Being prepared begins with having a serious time of honest accounting of our lives.  In one of his letters to the church in Corinth, Paul uses the word “reconciliation”, which is a term that we use both for auditing the account books and for setting right our relationships.  He says

“we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” [II Corinthians 5:20b]

As frightening as that sounds, God is ready to make this a positive, helpful moment.  God’s judgement isn’t a way of trying to find out our faults – God already knows them, even better than we do.  Instead, it’s a moment of reckoning with what God has already done to set accounts right.

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says,

‘At an acceptable time I have listened to you,
   and on a day of salvation I have helped you.’” [II Corinthians 5:21-6:2a]

So I’ll say the same thing as Paul.  Take the opportunity to straighten out your relationship to God, and to let his grace even out whatever needs to be settled, and do it now, before the inevitable surprise moment comes along.

“See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!” [II Corinthians 6:2b] 

            The other thing, is that having that assurance makes life a lot easier, because it puts things in perspective.  When Jim stepped off a landing craft and faced a narrow strip of land on the edge of an entire continent occupied by hostile forces, his soul was in a spot where he could do what he needed to do with courage and with purpose – and what he, along with thousands of others – had to do would not be easy for those who even lived to attempt it.

            The life of holiness to which God calls all of his people, too, calls for us not to dwell on our own sin and shortcoming, but on God’s salvation and his ongoing and constant assistance.  It isn’t enough to stay on the beach, but to move inland and keep going, not for our own sakes, but for the sake of those who await the liberty that Jesus suffered to bring all people.  He calls us to follow him

“through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.” [II Corinthians 6:4-10]

Again, hear his word:

“…now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!” 

 

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[1] “A Service of Death and Resurrection” in The United Methodist Hymnal (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1988), 871.

"Counting Towers" - February 16, 2025

 

Psalm 48
February 16, 2025

 

Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised
   in the city of our God.
His holy mountain, beautiful in elevation,
   is the joy of all the earth,
Mount Zion, in the far north,
   the city of the great King.
Within its citadels God
   has shown himself a sure defense.

Then the kings assembled,
   they came on together.
As soon as they saw it, they were astounded;
   they were in panic, they took to flight;
trembling took hold of them there,
   pains as of a woman in labor,
as when an east wind shatters
   the ships of Tarshish.
As we have heard, so have we seen
   in the city of the Lord of hosts,
in the city of our God,
   which God establishes for ever.

We ponder your steadfast love, O God,
   in the midst of your temple.
Your name, O God, like your praise,
   reaches to the ends of the earth.
Your right hand is filled with victory.
   Let Mount Zion be glad,
let the towns of Judah rejoice
   because of your judgements.

Walk about Zion, go all around it,
   count its towers,
consider well its ramparts;
   go through its citadels,
that you may tell the next generation
   that this is God,
our God for ever and ever.
   He will be our guide for ever.

 

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            In its plainest sense, Psalm 48 expresses gratitude to God for the walls of Jerusalem and the way that their size and solidity protected the city when it came under attack.  The psalmist describes foreign armies drawing up beneath the city walls and seeing both the defenses and the mountaintop rising above them and staring down on the invaders that the menace of the sight scared them off without a battle.

“Then the kings assembled,
   they came on together.
As soon as they saw it, they were astounded;
   they were in panic, they took to flight;
trembling took hold of them there,
   pains as of a woman in labor,
as when an east wind shatters
   the ships of Tarshish.”

            I think of the feeling that I get sometimes when I see an old prison.  I’m thinking about the big, stone kind that has probably outlasted its use for confining inmates but still intimidates anybody who even drives by quickly – like the old Montgomery County prison in Norristown, or Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, or maybe you’ve seen the jailhouse up in Jim Thorpe that once held the Molly Maguires.  The walls of a fortified city, in this case Jerusalem, would have induced discouragement in an invading army and provided encouragement to those who too refuge inside.

            It amazes me how a well-designed piece of construction, even something as seemingly simple in concept as a wall, can stir up a sense of admiration, even awe.  The writer of Psalm 48 looked at what would have been a version of Jerusalem’s walls – not even what they would become at their greatest extent or their tallest – and marveled not just at the walls themselves, but at the way they made him think about the even greater strength of God.

“Walk about Zion, go all around it,
   count its towers,
consider well its ramparts;
   go through its citadels,
that you may tell the next generation
   that this is God,
our God for ever and ever.
   He will be our guide for ever.”

He sounds proud of the city as an architectural achievement, and proud to be part of the people whose walls and whose God protected that people in time of war.

            A few centuries later, though, in 587 B.C., the Babylonians would complete a two-and-a-half-year siege of Jerusalem by overrunning the walls and burning the city down.  A generation or so later, Babylon got the same treatment from the Persians, who in 539 B.C. let Nehemiah take a group of exiles back to Jerusalem, where they found the walls in very bad shape and began to rebuild them again, at great risk to themselves.

            A similar cycle took place under the Romans almost six centuries later.  They, too, destroyed the city and its walls after a long siege, and on the Arch of Titus in Rome you can still see a carving of the victory parade where the legionnaires carried the furnishings of the Temple as trophies.  You might hear Psalm 48 with a little bit of cynicism, then, when it brags about  Jerusalem’s fortifications – except for one thing.

            It ultimately says that the people’s protection is not the walls around them, but the God who made them.  That is a hard lesson to learn, but every empire learns it sooner or later, and if they are wise, they keep it ever in front of them.  In 1887, on the day after Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, where fifty other monarchs came to pay their respects for her fifty years on the British throne, Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem that touched a lot of imperial nerves:

 

“God of our fathers, known of old,

   Lord of our far-flung battle-line,

Beneath whose awful Hand we hold

   Dominion over palm and pine—

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

 

The tumult and the shouting dies;

   The Captains and the Kings depart:

Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,

   An humble and a contrite heart.

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

 

Far-called, our navies melt away;

   On dune and headland sinks the fire:

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

   Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

 

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose

   Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,

Such boastings as the Gentiles use,

   Or lesser breeds without the Law—

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

 

For heathen heart that puts her trust

   In reeking tube and iron shard,

All valiant dust that builds on dust,

   And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,

For frantic boast and foolish word—

Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!”

            The psalms remain in the scriptures long after the walls that they celebrate have become obsolete, even if they still stood.  Psalm 48 remains as a testament to the blessings that come when human institutions function well and responsibly.  Look at what a good architect can do!  Appreciate the work of wise administrators!  Be thankful for skilled workers and organizers!  See what human beings and human institutions can accomplish when they understand themselves as not the be-all and end-all, but as a means to an end, aware that the true be-all and end-all,

“the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” [Revelation 22:13]

is no earthly King at all, but the one in heaven.

 

"The View from the Tower" - February 9, 2025

 

Isaiah 21:6-10
February 9, 2025

 

“For thus the Lord said to me:
‘Go, post a lookout,
   let him announce what he sees.
When he sees riders, horsemen in pairs,
   riders on donkeys, riders on camels,
let him listen diligently,
   very diligently.’
Then the watcher called out:
‘Upon a watch-tower I stand, O Lord,
   continually by day,
and at my post I am stationed
   throughout the night.
Look, there they come, riders,
   horsemen in pairs!’
Then he responded,
   ‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon;
and all the images of her gods
   lie shattered on the ground.’
O my threshed and winnowed one,
   what I have heard from the Lord of hosts,
   the God of Israel, I announce to you.”

 

 

            Have you or have you not, in the last week, heard someone say or said yourself words to the effect of, “Are we going to make it?” or “What is going to happen to us?”   That is not a rhetorical trope, a figure of speech used by a politician: “People are saying such-and-such.”  No, we are in a situation where I hear people ask me in a professional capacity whether the upset that is going on all around us is going to destroy their physical safety in the way that it has already ripped up their emotional security.  “Will I have a job in four years?”  “Will my children or grandchildren be protected from measles, mumps, and rubella?”  “Will there be bananas and tomatoes in the grocery store and, if so, will I be able to afford them?”  “Are my neighbors going to be deported?”  “Will my best friend be stripped of citizenship?”

            I’ll tell you flat out.  I don’t know.  I cannot tell the future.  But I can see the present, and I know that you’re scared. 

            Maybe you are one of those people who do not share those misgivings.  You can see the present, too.  Your neighbors are scared.  Your family members are scared.  Maybe you don’t understand why, but surely you can see it happening.

            The Lord spoke to Isaiah and told him to send watchmen onto the towers of Jerusalem.  Their job would not be to make predictions about what the future would hold.  They were not there to do anything except to let officials in the city know what they saw and heard.

“For thus the Lord said to me:
‘Go, post a lookout,
   let him announce what he sees.’” [Isaiah 21:6]

There would be a lot that would be unremarkable.  There would be the usual farmers with the produce and herdsmen driving sheep or cattle.  There would be pilgrims and priests on their way to the Temple.  There would be merchants and traders of all sorts. 

But there would also be unusual travelers from far away who might be talking about the weighty matters of that day which would impinge on the lives of people of all descriptions.  They might have news that could help or hurt the people of Jerusalem and Judah.  Then the watchmen’s job was not simply to watch but also to listen.

“When he sees riders, horsemen in pairs,
   riders on donkeys, riders on camels,
let him listen diligently,
   very diligently.” [Isaiah 21:7]

There would be an urgency to the watching and the listening.  It would be twenty-four hour news.

“Then the watcher called out:

‘Upon a watch-tower I stand, O Lord,
   continually by day,
and at my post I am stationed
   throughout the night.’” [Isaiah 21:8]

 

            Now, there is something that strikes me as strange about this assignment, and how it turns out.  Maybe it comes from watching too many action movies when I was a kid.  I picture watchmen on a city wall looking out for an approaching army.  In a Western it would be a sentry in a square tower at the corner of a fort spotting a dust cloud just before a raiding party rides up and over a hill.  In Isaiah, the watchers report,

“‘Look, there they come, riders,
   horsemen in pairs!’” [Isaiah 21:9a]

That doesn’t describe attackers so much as it describes soldiers fleeing a battle that went against them.  It sounds like people who somehow escaped.  What news would they bring?

“Then he responded,
   ‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon;
and all the images of her gods
   lie shattered on the ground.’” [Isaiah 21:9b]

So I say to the people in our own day to listen closely.  But listen closely not to the people you know.  Listen closely to people who are not even talking to you.  Listen to the people who are from outside your walls and hear what they say to one another and that is when you will hear what is going on in the widest sense.

            That has to come with a warning, though. 

“O my threshed and winnowed one,
   what I have heard from the Lord of hosts,
   the God of Israel, I announce to you.”  [Isaiah 21:10]

In the Old Testament, Babylon represented a real place.  It was the capital of an empire that was trying to take over the entire world as it knew it.  For that matter, so was Egypt.  Jerusalem was right between them and was repeatedly slammed by both.  Babylon’s destruction would mean freedom for the Jewish exiles who had been carried there by invading armies.  The fall of Babylon would restore Jerusalem’s sense of safety.

            In the New Testament, Babylon is used symbolically to represent any worldly political system that sets itself up to oppose or replace God’s rule.  It represents raw power exercised without mercy or restraint.  Such systems are doomed to failure across the board.  John’s vision in the book of Revelation looks to a future where all such empires face judgement.  John directly echoes Isaiah:

“Fallen, fallen in Babylon the great!  She has made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.” [Revelation 14:8]

In Julia Ward Howe’s words, “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.”  The message is no longer a simple matter of nation versus nation, but of faithfulness to God.

            Again, test what I say for yourself.  I am no prophet.  But what I see, you can see, and maybe we can make sense of it together.  So I am (probably foolishly) about to venture an answer to the questions I started this sermon with, and the answer is going to be, “Yes, but…” 

“Are we going to make it?”  Yes, but who do you mean by “we” and what do you mean by “make it”?  If “we” is American society as we have known it, it’s pretty clear that the divisions go deeper than the past few years and there will have to be a lot of grace shown by everybody to do more than get back to the status quo.  Even that won’t be good enough because if the status quo was working, we might not be asking these questions.

“What is going to happen to us?”  Again, if by “us” you mean American society as we have known it, I don’t know.  A lot depends on how the other “we” – Jesus’ followers take lead in loving God and neighbor when there are so many temptations and incentives not to do that placed in front of us.  If by “us” you mean Jesus’ followers, then the answer is that if we do follow him faithfully in any time of trial – personal or national, whatever – we are going to come out of it as better people – humbled, but better.  Better.  Not the same.  And not finished.

Our God is marching on.

           

"A Strong Tower" - February 2, 2025

 

Proverbs 18:10-11, Luke 12:13-21
February 2, 2025

  

The name of the Lord is a strong tower;
   the righteous run into it and are safe.
The wealth of the rich is their strong city;
   in their imagination it is like a high wall.

 

*********************************

 

Someone in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.’ But he said to him, ‘Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?’ And he said to them, ‘Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’ Then he told them a parable: ‘The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” Then he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’

 

*********************************

 

Normally, we tend to be all for imagination.  It helps people bring all sorts of good things into life.  Frank Sinatra sang,

 

“Imagination is funny
It makes a cloudy day sunny
It makes a bee think of honey
Just as I think of you
Imagination is crazy
Your whole perspective gets hazy
Starts you asking a daisy
What to do, what to do”.

 

But imagination can also trip people up when it gets too close to delusion.  And the greatest human delusion of all is that we don’t need God.  That’s called pride, which is at the base of humanity’s biggest problems.

 

            Luke describes Mary’s reaction to becoming the mother of the Messiah as bursting out into a joyful psalm about what God will do through the child she is carrying, and how his coming will overturn the order of the world in favor of the Kingdom of God.  She declares,

 

“He has shown strength with his arm;

he has scattered the proud

in the imagination of their hearts.” [Luke 1:51]

 

Proverbs 18:10-11 says something very similar, contrasting reliance on the Lord with reliance on our own resources, in this case wealth:

 

“The name of the Lord is a strong tower;
   the righteous run into it and are safe.
The wealth of the rich is their strong city;
   in their imagination it is like a high wall.”

 

“Imagination” here is not something creative, but something that’s giving a false sense of security.

 

            Jesus’ parable about a man who thought his financial riches alone, apart from trust in God, would mean not only a comfortable life but also a long one, takes that warning and runs with it.

 

“I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’  So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.” [Luke 12:19-21]

 

Jesus’ message is a simple one: “Don’t be that guy.”

 

            Financial struggles are a big part of people’s lives.  A recent article in Forbes says that

 

“According to data released by the Federal Reserve, credit card balances increased by $24 billion in the third quarter of 2024 to $1.17 trillion.

 

The Federal Reserve study does not provide numbers for the average credit card balance per consumer. However, according to TransUnion, this figure rose from $6,088 in the third quarter of 2023 to $6,380 in the third quarter of 2024.”[1]

That’s a bigger problem than the cost of eggs.  When. something like that is hanging over somebody’s head the worry and the strain get into every corner of life.  It wrecks people’s relationships, it endangers their health, it creates a sense of shame, it feeds moments of extreme anger and frustration.  Being able to pay off a few bills can do a world of good.  Nobody is saying that money doesn’t reduce the insecurity of life.

 

            Money won’t cure cancer, though.  It won’t be there for you when your spouse walks out.  It cannot replace a friend who has moved far away.  Wealth does not prevent droughts or hurricanes, wildfires or earthquakes.  You can’t buy back something you never should have said.  You cannot pay somebody to forgive you.  Even worse, when wealth creates a high wall, it might not just stand between somebody and disaster.  It might create a high wall between the people who have and the people who don’t.  It doesn’t have to do that, but it often does.

 

            Security is not to be found in this world.  Sorry.  Security comes from beyond, from God. 

 

“The name of the Lord is a strong tower;
   the righteous run into it and are safe.”

 

It is in God’s gift of his Son, whose coming pushes away all false imaginings, that a realistic hope replaces them.  Not everyone can be rich in things, but everyone can be “rich toward God.”  How fortunate someone is who is free from envy, who doesn’t feel the need to keep up with every fad.  How much consolation there is when someone can say at the end of a long day that they are loved, and have enough love in their own heart that they can’t even give it all away.  How much comfort there is in knowing that Jesus has given us a full and complete pardon and has paid off all of our accounts with one another and with God. 

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[1] https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/average-credit-card-debt/#average_american_credit_card_debt_section

"Varieties of Gifts" - January 19, 2025 (Pulpit exchange with St. John's Lutheran Church, Phoenixville

 

I Corinthians 12:1-11 (John 17:21-23)
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Phoenixville
January 19, 2025

 

            This is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which is a yearly observation that has been promoted by the World Council of Churches for almost a century now with varying degrees of effect.  The Evangelical Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Church in America became the ELCA, but I don’t see the Missouri Synod or Wisconsin Synod singing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” with you anytime soon.  Likewise, the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren came together as the United Methodist Church in 1968, but last year the Global Methodist Church broke off.  In December, in Nigeria, arguments between the Global Methodists and United Methodists resulted in two churches being burned to the ground and two children dying.  Is this Christianity – let alone Christian Unity?

            Whatever happened to Jesus’ prayer for his followers recorded in John:

“As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and loved them, even as you have loved me”?  [John 17:21-23]

That was hard enough when Jesus was praying for a relatively small group people who had been following him around Galilee for a couple of years.  One of them had already at that point turned him in to the authorities.  Others were within less than a couple of hours from running away and abandoning him, although in their fear they did find their way back together following his death and lock themselves inside an upper room together.  After nearly 2,000 years of trying to make sense of what came next and of asking each other, “What now?” compounded by trying to do that in multiple languages and cultures and occasionally getting seriously on one another’s nerves, is Christian unity a possibility?

            Yes.  It is.  I’d say that it exists and that we see it every day.  The reason we think of Christian unity as something that we try but fail to create, instead of seeing it as a reality already present.  It’s a blessing from God, ours to accept as a gift of the Holy Spirit.

            Mind you, I am not one of those people who considers everything up for grabs.  I do think that the church is more than a bunch of people hanging out and talking about Jesus and singing “Silent Night” once a year.  I see a clear need for the creeds as a statement of what is in bounds and out of bounds when we get to talking theology.  I don’t believe that any church can exist as a lone congregation any more than one person or even one household can exist on their own for very long.   I would be a lousy Baptist. 

On the other hand, I don’t see the essence of the church in one single form of organization and don’t see one format of worship as being the true, pure means to experience God’s presence.  I see the clergy as necessary to keeping things on track, so I wouldn’t be a good Quaker, but I don’t think should have the last word all the time, either.  I would be a lousy Catholic. 

            The New Testament came into being at a time before we had loaded a whole lot of baggage onto what it means to follow Jesus, and one of its earliest leaders, Paul, wrote to the Christians in the city of Corinth, where they had begun to divide themselves into cliques or parties, and told them to think of themselves as one body, made up of different parts.

“Now there are varieties of gifts but the same Spirit, and there are varieties of services but the same Lord, and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.  To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.  To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of power deeds, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.  All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.”  [I Corinthians 12:1-11]

I have heard (and preached) a lot of sermons on how that works out in a local church.  Here’s an idea: what if we were to apply those same principles to denominations or theological families or liturgical siblings or historical forebears?

            None of these categories will apply to every situation everywhere or at all times.  It might help us all simply appreciate one another better for who we are, though, instead of trying to recreate one another in our own images.

Be thankful for the Lutheran emphasis on faith.

Be thankful for the Methodist and Wesleyan insistence that faith without works is dead.

Be thankful for the Catholic search for holiness.

Be thankful for the Orthodox insistence on the centrality of worship.

Be thankful for the Anglican and Episcopal appreciation of tradition; and thankful for the Pentecostal appreciation of free response to the Spirit.

Be thankful for the Presbyterian and Reformed concern for orderliness; and be thankful for the Baptist reminder that the ministry of the laity is a universal calling.

Learn singing from the Moravians and silence from the Quakers.

Learn from the churches of Africa to dance and from the churches of South America to serve the poor.

Learn from the Salvation Army how to share our gifts, whatever they may be, with God’s people.

Learn from the Lord that we are one in him, as he, the Father, and the Spirit are one – distinct and undivided.

                                                                                                Amen.

Baptism of the Lord - January 12, 2025

 

Luke 3:15-22

January 12, 2025

 

“As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, ‘I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing-fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’

So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people. But Herod the ruler, who had been rebuked by him because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done, added to them all by shutting up John in prison.

Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’”

 

 

            When I was growing up baptism was usually explained to us as the Holy Spirit using the water to clean our souls the way that we use water to wash our hands and faces.

The explanation began by saying that we are born with a kind of sin within us that goes along with being human.  Even a baby, who has done nothing wrong, is tainted by the overall tendency of the human race to sin.  I understood what was being said there, and it makes some sense.  The great theologian Augustine of Hippo pointed out that babies are inherently self-centered.  They do not have the capacity to look beyond the moment nor beyond their own immediate needs.  That’s normal.  There comes a point, however, where that total self-centeredness turns into selfishness, into a me-first outlook, into sin.  Kids have to be taught to share.  Kids have to be taught empathy: “How would you like it if she did that to you?”

Baptism is a sign that, as a child of God, we are under the kind of parental care that not only corrects us when we need it but teaches us to ask those questions of ourselves, and connects us to a community of faithful people who share a commitment to seeking the kind of maturity where we see that we are not ourselves the center of the universe, but part of God’s wider project of creation.  I have all sorts of beefs with Rick Warren’s book The Purpose-Driven Church that was so popular a few years back, but one thing I admire is the clarity and directness of its opening sentence: “It isn’t all about you.”

            The Roman emperor Constantine, the one who first made Christianity the official religion of his empire, was not baptized until he was about to die.  He put it off and put it off for years, because he considered baptism this way.  As emperor, he would do things that were clearly sinful and he did them knowing so.  He figured that he could do all the sketchy things that went with the brutality of Roman rule as long as he could, then at the last minute be baptized so that his sins would be erased right before he went to judgement.  That seems like exploiting a loophole in the system.

Now, God’s grace is certainly there for us no matter what.  It is there to be shared, though, not to be hoarded.  It is there to enable us to follow Jesus, not to enable us to continue in the same old ways that have landed us and others in the same old trouble time and time again.  John compared what he did to what Jesus does

“by saying, ‘I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing-fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’” [Luke 3:16-17]

That’s not so much a warning of the wrath to come as it is a description of the difference that the Holy Spirit continues to make in human souls and human lives as part of the redemption that Jesus brought into the world.

If we are baptized only because we are sinners, why did Jesus, who was sinless, go to John to be baptized?  Matthew’s account of Jesus’ baptism recognizes that

“John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’” [Matthew 3:14]

Clearly there has to be more going on than a simple ritual act of forgiveness.  Jesus joins his ministry as the Savior with our own lives, and brings us in line with the Kingdom of God that he establishes not just in the abstract or in the time to come or in eternity, but here and now – among us.

            He set himself aside, and took his place among ordinary sinners, and

“when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’” [Luke 3:21-22]

Every first-grader knows what it means when one or two kids cannot settle down and the teacher announces that nobody in the class will be going to recess until everybody in the class is quiet.  That made me angry then and it makes me angry now.  Why should I get punished because of what somebody else has done?  We all come to accept that this is how the world is – that’s true.  A factory upstream releases pollution into a river and everybody downstream feels the consequences.  It’s not fair.  But it’s a good analogy for the way that we are all tangled up in sin, even if it isn’t our own.  And God does not just wash his hands of it or stay out of it.  He steps in to set it right.

            Then he asks us to do the same thing: to set ourselves aside and, in doing that, to live out who we really are as God’s own children, growing up into the likeness of his Son, Jesus.  Paul put it this way in his letter to the Philippians:

“If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
   did not regard equality with God
   as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
   taking the form of a slave,
   being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
   he humbled himself
   and became obedient to the point of death—
   even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him
   and gave him the name
   that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
   every knee should bend,
   in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
   that Jesus Christ is Lord,
   to the glory of God the Father.”     [Philippians 2:1-11]