[This message was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio during worship yesterday, the Second Sunday of Advent.]
Matthew 3:1-12
Once, in the days before cell phones, GPSes, or even Mapquest and Google Maps, I missed the biggest part of a farewell party--thrown for Ann and me--after driving past (and continuing to drive past) the house where it was happening. The party came at the end of my pastoral internship in Michigan.
Ann had gone separately because I needed to make a run to Traverse City before going to the farewell. By the time I finally made it, the whole thing was nearly over. All because I hadn’t asked for directions...and because once I was lost, I didn’t turn back when I should have. When we go wrong, the most sensible thing is to turn around. But I didn't do the sensible thing.
For a long time, as I was going wrong that day on the backroads of Benzie County, Michigan, I was too proud to turn back, too proud to admit that I was going wrong, too proud to find a payphone and call someone who could help me, too proud to confess that maybe Ann had been right about my need of her written directions offered earlier in the day.
Have you ever gone wrong in life, set out in the wrong direction and gotten lost?
I’m not just talking about the places you drive but also being wrong about
- the things you’ve thought,
- the decisions you’ve made,
- the relationships you’ve harmed,
- the untruths you’ve told,
- the walls you’ve built between God and yourself?
It’s so easy to lose our sense of direction and end up doing the wrong thing, the hurtful thing, the destructive thing, isn’t it?
That’s because we’re born with our moral compasses that are askew.
We actually like to sin.
We like to play God and travel the lost roads that go away from God.
We’re so messed up that we sin even when we don’t want to. The apostle Paul talks about this in Romans 7: "I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing." (Romans 7:19)
Like King David, we can confess, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” (Psalm 51:5)
In today’s gospel lesson, on this Second Sunday of Advent, we meet John the Baptizer, we meet John the Baptizer, whose message is as much for us today--when we look either to the return of Jesus to this world or the day when, just beyond our deaths, we meet Jesus face to face--as it was when John spoke them to prepare His fellow Jews to meet Jesus in the flesh for the first time.
Take a look at what John says near the beginning of the lesson, Matthew 3:1-12: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (v.2)
“Turn around,” John is saying. “You’re going in the wrong direction. Turn back toward the promised Savior and King because He’s bringing His Kingdom soon and you want to be ready!”
Are you ready to meet Jesus?
He died on a cross and rose from His tomb and is now ascended into heaven. He is Lord of heaven and earth. So, you will meet Him someday. Are you ready for that?
We may say, “Sure, I’m ready. I try to do the right thing.” God’s Word says, “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.” (Isaiah 64:6)
We may say, “I’m better than most people,” hoping that Jesus will judge us on a curve. But God’s Word says, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)
We may say, “God is gracious and loving. I don’t have anything to fear.” But in God’s Word, Jesus, God in the flesh, says, “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.” (Matthew 10:32-33)
We may say, “I’m a member of Living Water Lutheran Church.” But Jesus says that He will let the wheat and the weeds live side-by-side in His Church until the day of His return. If mere membership in the club were all that it took to be part of God’s Kingdom, John the Baptizer wouldn’t have told his fellow Jews, the Sadducees and Pharisees, “I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham” (Matthew 3:9). There’s nothing that we can do to make ourselves ready to meet Jesus.
But there is good news! Even within the harsh words of John the Baptist in our lesson today.
After warning that the coming Messiah Jesus had ax
in hand to take down all those whose lives don’t bear the fruit of repentance--the fruit of habitual turning back to God--John says (starting at verse 11): “I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
Did you hear the good news--the gospel--there?
John is saying, “Look, my baptism here on the Jordan River is nothing but you saying that you’re turning to God.”
That’s great, of course. But if our being right with God depends on our good intentions, we still end up a long way from God.
- I intend to work out every day but don’t always.
- I intend to get enough sleep at night but often don’t.
- I intend to write the great American novel but I haven’t yet.
John’s baptism of repentance was meant to prepare his fellow Jews for Jesus’ Baptism--God’s Baptism--that brings us forgiveness and new life with God.
It’s this Baptism, Jesus’ Baptism, that changes us, that brings God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit into our lives, that daily goes to work to kill off our old sinful selves, and that calls the ever-new, ever-righteous child of God to repent--to turn back--to Jesus.
It’s this Baptism that helps us to hear God’s call to us to turn to Jesus whenever we get lost and to trust that He has done everything (and is still doing everything) needed to make us right with God--to make us righteous, to trust that He will lead us in the right direction.
John’s imagery is interesting. He says that Jesus will institute a Baptism in “the Holy Spirit and fire.” Later, he says that those who turn from God will burn in “unquenchable fire.”
Fire is judgment.
The Holy Spirit is the One Who brings life into being.
Holy Baptism as instituted by Jesus first brings judgment on we who are born in sin, then gives new life from the Holy Spirit.
Our call from the moment we’re baptized is to keep turning to Christ, whatever our circumstances, even when we’re lost or afraid or conscious of our sin or overwhelmed.
We who have been baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire know that as we turn to Christ, our old selves are being drowned or burned away to make way for the new person God is retrofitting us to be, today and for all eternity.
In Jesus’ Baptism, we die with Jesus and we are raised to be with Him. Saint Paul puts it like this: “We were therefore buried with [Jesus] through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” (Romans 6:4)
You and I have a penchant for going in the wrong direction. But the life-giving Word of God, the gospel of Jesus, has entered into our lives in Holy Baptism and comes to us again and again in the Word proclaimed and read and heard, and in the body and blood of Jesus given in Holy Communion to turn us back to Him and to the life that only He can give.
If you remember nothing else from this message, remember this: Turn to Him as He calls you and live in His Kingdom, today and eternally. Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today. This is the second part in a four-installment series on living out our Baptism.]
Acts 2:41-47
Everybody loves baptisms. In fact, we seem to bathe baptism in sentimentalities. This is true whether the baptized is a child or an adult.
I have a feeling that much of the sentimentality about Holy Baptism involves things like the cuteness of the baptized child or the supposed uprightness of the adult submitting to baptism. In such cases, the baptized is the center of attention rather than God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit Who, through water, brings His saving Word to the person being baptized.
We seem to forget what happens in Holy Baptism.
The first thing that happens as the water connected with God’s Word hits our foreheads is that we die. Our sinful selves are drowned and we share in the death of Jesus, God the Son, on the cross.
We die to sin and self so that a second thing can happen when we receive Holy Baptism: We rise to new and everlasting life with God.
This is a life that still must be apprehended by faith in Christ, to be sure, faith in Christ created within us by the Holy Spirit.
But in Holy Baptism, the man, woman, or child who was born in sin and who has died with Christ for that sin is lifted out of sin, chaos, death, darkness, and futility by the gracious hand of God.
The apostle Paul says in Romans 6:4: “We were therefore buried with [Christ] through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”
Through the waters of Holy Baptism, God graciously reaches down to make new the person who dies and rises at the baptismal font.
But even new creatures can take wrong turns. (Think of Adam and Eve.)
Baptized Christians, who are simultaneously saints by the grace of God and sinners by nature, are daily called to return to the One Who saves us.
In The Small Catechism, Martin Luther asks what the significance God’s decision to baptize us through the means of water might be. His answer: “It signifies that the old Adam in us, together with all sins and evil desires, should be drowned by daily repentance and sorrow for sin, and be put to death, and that the new person should come forth every day and rise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”
After we have been baptized, neither the devil, nor the world, nor our sinful selves give up on dragging us back into the chaos of sin, into ruptured relationships with God, with others, with the self, with creation.
Luther says that our call is to daily be re-membered or reconnected with Christ so that sin, death, and the devil are unsuccessful in pulling us down again into the deep of separation from God.
But this lifestyle of discipleship--a lifestyle of daily repentance and renewal--isn’t easy, especially if we try to do it ourselves. The person who thinks that they can be a Christian or grow as a Christian without God is bound to fail.
When one’s faith life is just Jesus and me or Jesus, me, and the people I find companionable, it’s too easy to confuse my ideas and my preferences for the ideas and preference of God. It’s too easy to fall into the thought that Christian faith isn’t about what God has done for me through Jesus, but about all the things I do that I think are good by Jesus. In our own power, we can never be good enough to warrant entry into God's eternal kingdom or even have a relationship with God. Isaiah rightly says of our human race, "...all our righteous acts are like filthy rags." (Isaiah 64:6)
“I guess I’ve done enough good stuff for the Church and other people to get into heaven,” a man once told me with a straight face. He could only have said that if he’d been listening to the devil, the world, and his own sinful nature more than he’d been listening to God’s Word or the testimony of the Church.
Yet God has decisively acted to safeguard and guide us in living out our Baptism each day. And how has He done that?
Let’s take a look at Acts 2:41-47. These verses from Acts, a New Testament book written by the Gospel writer, Luke, come right after Luke’s account of the first Christian Pentecost. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came to Christ’s Church, then sent all of its members out to tell of God’s mighty acts. Using God’s Word in the Old Testament, Peter explained to the crowd that it was Jesus, crucified, risen, and ascended Who had sent the Holy Spirit to enable the Church to tell everyone about the new life Jesus offers, three thousand people were baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the first Christian baptisms.
And all the baptized became part of the Church. Verse 42 says: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”
Notice that the old and new believers all were sustained in living out the Baptism God had given to them in four ways.
First, they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching. They spent time in God’s Word. God’s Word has the power to transform us from enemies of God to forever friends of God. Churches and individual Christians start to depart from God when they stop reading God’s Word together and individually. The apostle Paul tells the young pastor Timothy: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” (2 Timothy 3:16)
Second, the first Christians spent time in fellowship with each other. The word translated as fellowship from the Greek in which Acts was originally written is koinonia. This is more than having a laugh with someone in the hallway of the church. Koinonia has the idea of partnership. The Church is a group of people called together by Christ for the common mission of being and making disciples.
Third, the first Christians devoted themselves to “the breaking of the bread.” I feel sure that this means the disciples regularly and frequently received the body and blood of Jesus, Holy Communion. In Luke 24:30, on the first Easter Sunday, two disciples who hadn’t yet figured out that they were in the presence of the risen Jesus, immediately knew Him as He broke the bread and gave it to them. In Holy Communion, the baptized are re-membered to Jesus, forgiven for our sins, and filled with His life. We are renewed in our relationship with Christ.
Fourth, the first Christians devoted themselves to prayer. They prayed together.
Acts 2:44-47 goes on to say: “All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
Some suggest from this passage that the early Church was a socialist community in which all the people owned and shared “the means of production.” That’s a stretch. But what we do see clearly from this passage is that the early Church members were in community with each other and shared what they had, including the good news of new life through faith in Jesus, with each other and the world.
To live with this kind of love and sacrifice of self is not only foreign to how society teaches us to live, it’s foreign to our very nature.
Only people who know that they are desperately, totally loved and saved by the God we meet in Jesus, would even want to live this life of complete trust in God and love for others.
I confess that when God asks me to love people I find unlovable, to give to a cause from which I can’t imagine I will ever derive benefit, to spend time with someone I’d rather not be around, or to interrupt my plans by in doing something that I’d rather not do, the old Mark in me, wants to run the other direction.
I especially want to run the other way when God calls me to trust in Him even in times of pain, adversity, or grief...or when I’m not getting my own way.
But I find myself trusting in the God I know in Jesus, doing things that I don’t want to do because, through the Church, I have heard God’s saving Word, been called to the common mission of the Church, received Christ’s body and blood, and prayed with God’s people.
Through the Church, I am reminded again of God’s grace given to me through Jesus, the grace in which I was washed clean at my baptism, and I am filled again with the Holy Spirit to will and to do what God wants for my life and not what I want to do.
The celebrated writer and philosophy professor Dallas Willard, a mentor to our bishop, John Bradosky, once observed, “The average church-going Christian has a headful of vital truths about God and a body unable to fend off sin.”
That’s why the Church is so important.
The Church is God’s support group for baptized Christians, God's support group for recovering sinners.
The Church, the body of Christ, helps saints and sinners saved by God’s grace to have the faith to keep following Jesus when everything in us and everything around us scream at and the devil whispers to us to go our own ways, to look out for our own perceived and earthbound interests and to forget about God or others.
For we baptized Christians, the Church is our family, the fellowship through which Christ gives those who believe in Him the benefits of His death and resurrection.
In Holy Baptism, God makes us part of Christ’s family, the Church. We acknowledge this at every baptism.
“Through Baptism,” the pastor says, “God has made these new sisters and brothers members of the priesthood we all share in Christ Jesus, that we may proclaim the praise of God and bear His creative and redeeming Word to all the world.”
And the Church responds, “We welcome you into the Lord’s family. We receive you as fellow members of the body of Christ, children of the same heavenly Father, and workers with us in the kingdom of God.”
Baptism, as I said last week, is a big deal. In it, God saves us, giving us a share in Jesus’ death and resurrection.
But, as we see from Acts 2, He also makes us part of Christ’s eternal family, the Church.
May we then, be avid participants in the life of the Church, supporting one another and deepening our own relationship with the God Who has baptized us by
- being together regularly to hear God’s Word,
- partnering together to fulfill the mission of the Church,
- receiving Christ’s body and blood together, and
- praying together.
These elements, more than any other things we might name, are what God uses to help us live out our Baptism. Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]
Luke 12:49-56
During the recent Lutheran Week in Indianapolis, I tried to eat a sandwich made with the kind of crumbly, disintegrating bread that used to give gluten-free a bad name. After lunch, Wayne asked me about the diet I had to keep in light of Celiac Disease and a heart attack I had nine years ago. As we rode down an escalator, I told him, “You know, some days I can’t wait to be with Jesus in eternity, partly because I’ll be able to eat whole wheat bread and run and play baseball again.”
Some people near us on the escalator giggled when they heard me say that. And it is funny. I chuckled too. But don’t all Christians sometimes fantasize about the things we’ll do in eternity with Jesus once we’re free of the constraints of sin, death, and darkness that pervade this life?
But there’s a danger to our lives as Christians in focusing too much on eternity: It may cause us to ignore what Jesus calls the crisis of living each day in this world, in this life, as followers of Jesus Christ.
We can get so accustomed to thinking that Jesus is on our sides, taking Him and the free gift of eternal life with God He gives to all who believe in Him, for granted, and thus, feeling free to do, say, and live any way we decide to.
Listen: Jesus has not set us free from sin and death so that we can ignore His will.
He has not set us free from sin and death so that we can ignore the needs of our neighbors or the injustice, bigotry, or hatred with which the world treats them.
Jesus has not set us free from sin and death so that we can view our church membership as a get-out-of-hell pass while ignoring the need our neighbors have for Jesus’ salvation, ignoring that about a quarter or more of our neighbors have zero religious belief.
This means that every day a Christian lives on this earth faces a crisis. I’m using that word as Jesus does in John 12:31, where He says, “Now is the time for judgment on this world,” which is more literally translated from the Greek in which all the New Testament writers originally composed their books: “Now is the crisis [κρίσις] of this world.”
Here, Jesus is saying that, in this life, in each moment of this life, you and I deal with a decision point, a moment when we must make a judgment. And the judgment we must make is this:
Will we turn to Jesus or will we turn away from Him?
Will we turn to the world, to what’s easy, to what’s socially acceptable, to what’s safe, to what’s advantageous to us if heedless of the needs of my neighbor, to go along to get along or will we turn in repentance and faith to Jesus?
Our gospel lesson for this morning, Luke 12:49-56, finds Jesus turning abruptly from answering questions about the end of earth’s days after which all who have trusted in Him will live in His fully perfected kingdom, to the crisis the confronts us each day: the judgment you and I must make as to whether in this moment--at work, in our relationships, at home, in the world--we will turn to Jesus and live or walk away from Jesus and experience death.
Take a look at our lesson, please. Jesus begins: “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!”
These words don’t fit with the world’s usual image of Jesus, the Jesus of the sentimentalists who think Jesus was a wonderful guy, but not someone they have to answer to.
Fire, an image that Jesus and the early Church used in talking about the Holy Spirit, is a symbol of judgment and of cleansing.
Jesus, to be sure, has come into the world to bring salvation and peace with God to all who believe in Him.
But He has also come to singe us in the purifying flames of God’s judgment, to burn away all that’s evil, unwholesome, and unloving, in order to refine us like precious metals, separating us from sin and death.
To truly trust in Jesus begins with truly understanding, daily, that we are sinners who need to confess our sin, divesting ourselves of our addiction to sin. Then, purged of death and darkness, we can rise to newness of life.
This is what happens to us in Holy Baptism: first, our old selves are drowned, then our new selves, God’s brand new creatures, rise.
Because the old self still lurks until the days of our physical deaths and resurrections, the Christian life is composed of returning each day to the Lord of the baptismal font for this same death and resurrection to happen again and again.
Romans 6:4 reminds us, “We were therefore buried with [Jesus Christ] through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” This new life is what God wants to give to all people through faith in Jesus every single day!
Then Jesus says: “But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed!”
Jesus wants to bring each person who hears His name to the crisis point to which we all need to come in order to receive Him and the life that only He can give to us.
But before that could happen, Jesus had to undergo the baptism of death on a cross.
His mission on earth would only be fulfilled when He did this and could say, “It is finished.”
On the cross, Jesus shares the death that belongs to every human being from the moment we are born: the death of separation from the One Who gives life. It was from this place of separation that Jesus cried from the cross, “My God! My God! Why have You forsaken me.”
But because God the Father raised Jesus from the dead, in the waters of Baptism, we share in Jesus’ death so that the Father too, can raise those who trust themselves and their whole lives to Jesus. It was to accomplish this for you and me that Jesus couldn’t wait--He felt constrained to go to the cross, set His face for Jerusalem--that Jesus went to the cross.
Jesus then says: “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
In this life, anyone who dares to follow Jesus, who daily turns to Jesus to seek the death of their old selves and the creation of their new selves, who live in what we Lutherans call “daily repentance and renewal” can expect that even members of our own families will turn against us.
Or that, at any rate, they won’t understand us.
Likely, everyone here has taken shots for following Jesus from someone in their family: siblings, cousins, parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren. Or, they have experienced not being understood. I know that I have. It’s just part of following Jesus.
At this point in our lesson, Jesus addresses the end of this world when He will return to judge the living and the dead in light of how we address the crisis--the judgment points--we face every day. “He said to the crowd: ‘When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, “It’s going to rain,” and it does. And when the south wind blows, you say, “It’s going to be hot,” and it is. Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?'”
Where Jesus lived in the first century AD, if people saw clouds in the west, they knew that rain was coming in from the Mediterranean and if they felt hot winds coming from the Negev to the south, they knew were in for a heatwave. People knew how to read those meteorological signs.
But here is Jesus, God the Son, standing right in front of these people, His identity as God and Savior repeatedly confirmed by miracles, signs, and wonders, by His words, by His compassion, by His sinlessness, yet they ignore all these signs.
They don’t see that they need to turn to Jesus now and believe in Him.
It’s as though they’re holding out for more proof, which will soon come in His death and resurrection, though most of the crowds who thronged to Jesus during His life on earth would never believe in Him even after He rose from the dead.
It’s as though too, the crowd is waiting for a better offer. “Maybe,” they seem to think, “we can follow Jesus, but from a distance, getting just enough of Him to get the blessings He offers, but not close enough to actually have to give up the old sins we love so much, not close enough to actually hear Him call us to a life of love of God and love of neighbor, of worship and prayer, of witness to others for Jesus. Maybe we can have Jesus without being changed by Him, without being His disciple.”
Folks, it doesn’t work like that. As you’ve heard me say before (and as I need to be constantly reminded myself): We will either have all of Jesus or we will have none of Jesus at all.
I’m guessing that the hesitation of the crowd surrounding Jesus that day is no different from the hesitation felt by most people in most churches in North America. They don’t perceive the crisis of each moment, the need to turn to Jesus for life and forgiveness right now in every right now of life because life in this world can end in the blink of an eye and then there will be no more opportunity to turn to Jesus and live.
It’s because of this hesitation in the churches of the US, Canada, and Europe that,
Today, there are nearly as many Lutherans in Ethiopia as there are in the U.S. There are now more Baptists in Nagaland (an eastern state in India) than there are in [all of] the southern states of the U.S. There [are] more Christians worshipping in China [on this] Sunday than there [are doing so] here in the U.S. or in all of Europe!
Christians in America have largely lost their sense of urgency about being and making disciples--about turning to Jesus and inviting others, despite the possibility of rejection, to turn to Jesus too.
We have forgotten the moment to moment crisis that is the permanent state of being in this fallen world.
But Jesus’ call is still urgent, folks. He says: “The time has come...The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”
There isn’t a better moment to follow Jesus than right now, in this moment in which God allows you to live on this earth.
There isn’t a better moment to share Jesus with others than right now on this earth.
Because Jesus saves us by grace through faith in Christ alone, may this always be our prayer:
Jesus, what do you want me to do or say, who do you want me to listen to, pray for, or serve right now?
And then may we do what He calls us to.
We don’t have to wait for a perfect time to live in the freedom Jesus gives to His disciples.
In the crisis moments--the decision points--of each day, may we always turn to Jesus. Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
