A Light to the Nations

January 15, 2017—2 Epiphany

Is. 49.7

       About 500 years prior to his coming to the earth, God announced to his beloved Son: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

        God privileged the prophet Isaiah to overhear this announcement. Isaiah in turn shared this inspired word with the people of Israel. It was a word of great hope. It was a great promise. The promise implicit in this prophecy was that God would send someone to Israel who would not only inspire and enlighten the Jewish people, but whose wisdom would enlighten the whole world. It would be through Israel that the entire pagan-idol-worshipping world would at last see who God really is. It was the mission and honor of Israel to be the home of God’s servant, the one through whom the entire world would at last be blessed with knowledge of the one true, eternal, and living God. God would do this and Israel would be the nation to whom he would come.

       Jesus identified himself as the servant of God to whom this prophecy was addressed. “I am the light of the world” he said as he stood in the Temple, “who follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (John 8.1-2).

        A man who could make such an exalted claim about himself would have to be one of two things. He would either have to be who he said he was or he would have to be insane. You can’t make a claim like that lightly. You can but it would be ridiculous. I could say, “I’m the light of the world” to which I can imagine my wife replying, “Well, that’s wonderful, but it’s Saturday and you have Christmas decorations to take down so, Light of the World, let’s get going.” Just because you say you’re the world’s true light doesn’t require anyone to take you seriously.

       So unless you are crazy, conceited, intent on embarrassing your family, or you just hunger for attention, why do this? There are only two possibilities. Either Jesus really was the servant of God to whom God said in heaven, “I will give you as a light to the nations” or he was insane. If he was who he said he was then he was God’s man in our midst. If he was not God’s man, he was a madman, because who but a madman would say, “I am the light of the world,” expecting to be taken seriously and believed if he wasn’t? Was Jesus insane? Those who deemed him guilty of blasphemy thought so. But does anyone really believe that the man who preached the Sermon on the Mount, whose many sayings from that sermon have inspired millions of people the world over to live better lives, was nuts? Was the man who proclaimed, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God” insane? Was he, who by the power of his personal charisma alone restored movement to the legs of a paralyzed man, out of his mind? His critics charged that he was wrong to forgive that man his sins. “God alone has authority to do that,” they said. But what if he was God’s servant come down from heaven, what then? Was he out of his mind when he called Lazarus to come out of the tomb? Some at the time thought so, until Lazarus, four days dead, walked out of his tomb. So who was Jesus if he wasn’t insane? There’s only one possibility: he was who he said he was.  He was the one appointed by God while he was still in heaven to be a light to the nations, the servant prophesied by Isaiah whom God had promised to send to earth, through whom all the people of the earth would come to know God.

       That’s who he was. And yet, many then and many today find it hard to believe that a man from Nazareth could be God’s man. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” the incredulous Nathaniel asked (John1.46). Implicit in his question is an intellectual skepticism that transcends the centuries. There are many thinking people in every age who cannot believe that God would stoop so low as to come into the world through its back door. How could a peasant from a small rural town in Galilee, a man of no distinction, be God’s man, the world’s savior? On its face, it’s preposterous. And yet, that is what God did. “He has put down the mighty from their thrones,” his mother said, “and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away” (Lk.1.52). If the intellectuals would think about it just a little longer, they might realize that it’s as preposterous for us to anticipate God as it is for a turtle to imagine what the hawk will do next. God is so far above us, what could be more pretentious than for men to judge him who judges us? “My thoughts are not your thoughts nor are your ways my ways” says the Lord. We learn about God by listening to Jesus, not by tuning him out.  

        When Jesus was executed, Pontius Pilate nailed a sign to the wooden beam on which he was being crucified. And the sign that hung above his head read: “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” (John.19.19). This was to indicate the crime of which he was found guilty: treason. The irony in that sign is that he was not guilty of treason; he really was the king of the Jews, the chosen one foreseen by Isaiah who was anointed by God in heaven to discharge that office on earth. He was not conceited. He was not a megalomaniac. He was not a madman. He was what every prophecy fulfilled inherently is: hard to believe, but true nevertheless. He was who he said he was: the king of Israel whose authority to rule came from heaven. Pilate mocked him and thought he was mad. But that is just the point, he was not a madman. It was therefore Pilate who committed the crime. Pilate was guilty of judging him who, by divine right, is the judge of us all.

         It is a crime that governors and kings, presidents and the nations of this world commit day after day after day, whenever we ignore Jesus Christ and fail to pay homage to him who is the true king of all mankind. He is the one to whom God expects us to look for true religious wisdom and for moral leadership. That is what the saying means, “I will give you as a light to the nations.” God’s expectation is that men will be guided by the light; that every nation will look and listen to Jesus Christ as to a true light. He is the one who has made God known. God has revealed himself in Jesus. You wonder who God is and what God is like, look to Jesus on the cross. There God is visibly suffering to fulfill his scriptures, keeping his promise to save us from our sins, and praying for our souls—“Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” His gospel is not the personal opinion of a marginal Jew. It is the word of him of whom God said,“This my beloved Son. Listen to him!”

       We live in a very wealthy and amazing nation, a nation that has done some great things and aspires to greatness. We defeated the Japanese Imperial Army and the Third Reich and we compelled Mr. Gorbachev to “tear down that wall.” That’s some major stuff. But those aren’t even our finest accomplishments. We invented the World Series, the NFL Playoffs, the Hersey bar and buttered popcorn. No wonder almost everyone wants to live here. This is a great place. But after we put our patriotism and cultural pride aside, we see that there is in God’s eyes only one measure of true greatness. A nation is only great to the extent that its people and its leaders look to the world’s true Light for guidance. A people that believes every man is a light unto himself and every woman a reflection of the Great Spirit that animates the Universe is a people lost in darkness. But this witch’s brew of religious pluralism and syncretism that characterizes faith in the modern age only proves that what the Psalmist said of the ancient pagan world is still true today: “all the gods of the peoples are idols; but the Lord made the heavens” (Ps.96.5). The secular humanist culture in which we live preaches to us relentlessly that an enlightened mind is an open mind and that a free nation is one that is free to draw upon the wisdom of every deity. Saint John said of a man who looks at life this way, “the darkness has blinded his eyes” (1 John2.11).  God has spoken and his Word is light and there is no question as to who that true Light is, “the true light that enlightens everyone has come into the world” (John1..9): the Light of the nations is Jesus Christ. And great is the nation who sees him for who he is.

The Baptism of Christ

January 8, 2017—Epiphany 1 

Matt. 3.13-17                                                    

       Baptism is something that I fear a great many Christians take for granted. Most Christians today, having received baptism in infancy, were not aware of what God was doing for them at the time. And many of them still, decades later, are no more aware now of what a great gift they were given at baptism than they were then. You would think that children growing up would have a burning curiosity and desire to learn about the sacred mystery of his or her baptism and to explore the full range of its meaning. But seldom is that the case. All too often baptism is greeted with a yawn; few seem to take much interest in it. Many think that baptism, or the “christening," as some call it, is nothing but a rite of initiation into a club called “the church."  To many it’s just an ethnic custom, something parents do for their children because it’s expected of them. Their parents did it for them, as their parents before them. We carry on a tradition. And by participation in this ancient rite we indicate that we are, nominally at least, Christians.

         But few, I think, really understand the magnificence and the grandeur of this supernatural event; that it’s not something we do to each other, it’s something God does to us. In one sense, I have never baptized anyone. Yes, as the priest, I pour water on the person’s head and pronounce the words, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt.28.19). We do it that way, using those words because that is how Jesus instructed his church to do it. But still, all I can do as a minister is pour water and offer a prayer, God gives the grace. And it’s the grace of God applied to our souls that makes baptism more than a rite of initiation into a human organization. Grace makes it a sacrament of the church, a holy mystery by which the human soul is washed clean of original sin and restored to primal innocence we had with God in Eden.

       Baptism effects a new beginning in the most important relationship each of us has with God, our Creator. By it, we who were from birth marked with the sin of Adam and Eve on our souls are marked as Christ’s own forever through baptism, our second birth (John3.1–8). The mark of Adam’s guilt is washed away in baptism and we are “born anew," as Jesus put it “through water and the Spirit." And the new life given to us in baptism is the life of God’s only begotten son, without which, Jesus said, no one “cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John3.5).

        As we share his life, we share his privileges. The chief privilege Christ has is that of calling God “my father”; a privilege Adam originally had but lost because of his sin. Through baptism it becomes our privilege also. And just as God looking upon Jesus proclaimed, “This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased, today I have begotten thee” (Mt.3.16; Psalm2.7), so too in baptism God pronounces us to be in relation to him as Christ is. In other words, through the miracle of baptism the privilege of sonship that belonged to Christ by virtue of his divine nature becomes ours by grace. This is why Christians have always prefaced the Lord’s Prayer by saying, “As Our Savior taught us, we are bold to say, Our Father…”. We have no right to call God “Father” apart from Jesus, the Son, who by making us his own in baptism has given us that right.

        We exercise this great privilege through faith, provided we have faith. And by faith I mean not just a sentimental feeling that God adores us but a conviction strengthened by knowledge and experience that the revelation of God in Christ is true: not true in the sense that Bach was a greater genius that Brahams but true in the sense that the sun rises always in the east. You can count on it. Sadly as we go through life many of us lose faith. Many poo-poo baptism as a lot of hocus-pocus—Christian superstition and nothing more. Others insist, like pagans, that we are all children of God by birth, that there is no such thing as original sin and that we do not need “the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit” of which Paul reminded Titus (Titus 3.5). What we need, they say, is to use our inner potential to become like gods. Still others think the religion that bears Christ’s name is just too exclusive for a modern inclusive society. Many think its offensive to claim that we need the baptism of Christ to be saved. “What about Jews? What about Muslims? What do you say to them?” they ask. Jesus had an answer for them. “Blessed are you who take no offense at me,” he said. They didn’t like his attitude then, they like it even less today. But Jesus never said that everyone would accept baptism. And indeed, many will not.

     But many do receive baptism and many take it as they take their marriage vows, as a sacred bond in the most important of all relationships. So for those of you who take your baptism as a precious gift, I wish to encourage you this morning to keep the faith and to keep your baptismal vows. The best way to do that is to remember what God has done for us. Jesus’s baptism served God’s purpose as a revelation of Christ’s divine nature and a fulfillment of prophecy. God did not give to Jesus in baptism something he lacked, because he lacked nothing. But God does give us something in baptism that we lack. He gives us the Holy Spirit and the forgiveness of sins. “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2.38). It is the Holy Spirit that allows us to call God Father (Rom.8.14-16), a privilege we claim only because Jesus, the only begotten son of God, claims us in baptism as his own and shares with us the privileges of his sonship. In other words, when it comes to our relationship with God we are nothing without Jesus. We owe him everything; a debt we can never repay. But in giving us the Holy Spirit he has given us everything we need. And thus, paradoxically, he even helps us pay the debt we owe, a debt we pay by receiving the Holy Spirit and allowing the Spirit through faith to guide us in everything.

     There is one way to honor our baptism and it is this: “Do not get drunk with wine,” Saint Paul admonished the church, “but be filled with the Spirit!” (Eph.5.17). And then, “Be imitators of God and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us” (Eph.5.1-2) and so as we have been comforted by him we may give comfort and consolation to others (2Cor.3.1). Christ did not run from our suffering but took up his cross and embraced our human sorrow; so we must also take up the sorrow of others and not run from the suffering of others but in empathy and solidarity embrace them in their suffering. Have no fear of others in their suffering. The Holy Spirit is perfect love and perfect love casts out fear (1John4.8).

       Do you see where I am going with this? With Christendom now, like Camelot, a memory; with a secular nation now engulfed in a guerrilla war with an ancient foe; and with new ISIS-inspired slaughter making headlines each week at home or abroad, the world needs the Spirit of Christ more than ever. Our greatest weapon in the war against evil is the Holy Spirit, the agent of the grace of God. A divine grace that is powerful enough to cleanse a human soul of sin can foil a jihadi plot before it is even hatched.

       But the Spirit only responds to faith. If America would be great again, if we would be safe and sane again, and drug-free again, we must have faith.  Faith can move mountains, Jesus said, when nothing else can. We are facing a mountain range of troubles: of twenty trillion dollars of debt, drug dealers in every alley, ISIS cells in every state, and decades of such flagrant disobedience to God that virtually every institution in this nation is corrupted. This nation has to change or God is going to say, “To hell with it. I don’t need these people.” God doesn’t need us. We need God.

       We can’t do much about our neighbors, but we can change our minds and our ways of being in the world. The number one change we all need in this country is to value our baptism above everything else and resolve each day to keep the faith and be filled with the Spirit. The spirit will do for our nation what ten-million police can never do. The Spirit will return peace and dignity to our chaotic airports and our blood-soaked city streets and to our broken homes and to our agnostic schools, to our decadent theaters and our foul-mouthed concert halls. America, look to the Spirit to lead you and guide you and pray for the churches. As the pews fill up marriages will strengthen, crime will dry up, debt will dwindle down and terror will retreat. God who gave us the Spirit in baptism will do this. But God responds to faith.

A New Year's Resolution

January 1, 2017 (Christmas 1)—The Feast of the Holy Name

John1.1–14

          When I was a boy, I loved the Boy Scout troop to which I belonged. To this day I think our scoutmaster, Mr. Ireland, an auto mechanic who also sang in the choir at the Methodist church that our family attended, was the greatest guy in the world. For twenty-five years he ran the greatest Boy Scout troop imaginable. It was my privilege to be part of that troop for almost eight years. I rose to the rank of Eagle Scout and then became a junior assistant scoutmaster. I cherish the memories I have of those happy days. But early on, I almost gave up and quit the troop. When I was a tenderfoot, one of the older boys, by which I mean a twelve year old, sent me on a fool’s errand. They didn’t want me to help with cooking dinner; so in order to get rid of me, they sent me out to find “a left-handed monkey wrench,” which they said they needed. ‘Where can I find that?” I asked. “I don’t’ know," he said, “Just ask around, someone always has one.” So I went around the camp asking for a left-handed monkey wrench, until it finally dawned on me that there was no such thing, I was being made fun of. After that, I felt so humiliated that I almost quit the scouts. But I didn’t quit; I got over it. Still I learned a lesson. Many times in life, people tell us things that aren’t true and we believe them, and so we waste a lot of time in life embracing false notions.

       I suppose many people would equate preachers of the gospel with that boy who sent me on the fool’s errand. They feel we’re pulling the wool over their eyes by asking them to believe a message that can’t possibly be true. In the minds of many, the gospel of God becoming man incarnate—the divine nature assuming the fullness of human nature in order to redeem human nature and divinize it so that, in the words of Saint Peter, we might “become partakers of the divine nature” (2Pet.1.4)—is so fantastical that no sane person actually would be so gullible as to believe it. Right? I mean those who preach this tall tale don’t, themselves, believe it, do they?

       I met a man once whose hobby, so to speak, was tracking down and interviewing people who had encountered space aliens. He had encountered a space alien once, he said, and that encounter changed his life. Furthermore, he said that he had documentary proof of space aliens, who, for some reason have taken a liking to Jacksonville, Florida. You smile at that. I smile at that. We both recognize that this man and others like him are delusional. But how different are they from people who believe that Jesus, a man from Galilee, was fully God? Aren’t people who are skeptical of the claims of the gospel as right to be skeptical of that gospel as we are today to doubt the sanity of those who insist that they have been assaulted by space aliens? What makes the one narrative sacred and the other ridiculous? Isn’t it just a matter of 'he said, she said'? So one man believes in Jesus, another believes in space aliens; aren’t they both essentially engaged in the same act of self-deception, of seeking escape in a story that dresses up this naked existentialist farce we call life in a glamorous romance? I ask you seriously, adult to adult: you don’t really take the gospel to be anything more serious than tales of space aliens, do you? I know that some of you are thinking: I’ve been to Roswell, New Mexico, I know there’s something in that warehouse that the government's keeping secret from us. If there’s something really there, Trump will bring it out and make a reality show of it; that will be great!

       You know, there is a ”scientific” program called SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) that is ongoing. As I speak, some of the great minds of our age are busy searching the stars and listening to radios for evidence of intelligent life out there, somewhere on the edge of the universe. Many people who search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, like those who believe in space aliens and UFOs, have two things in common with those who preach the gospel. They believe that human intelligence did not cause itself, that there has to be a prior cause to intelligent human life beyond this planet. And two: many others think they are deluded for believing what they believe and that they are squandering their lives and talents to spend a lifetime searching for what amounts to a left-handed monkey wrench. Whether it’s a search for God or for space invaders, it’s a search for something that doesn’t actually exist beyond the borders of the minds of those who imagine it. Many will say that a belief in God, like a belief in UFOs, is akin to a belief in unicorns or the tooth fairy; a complete fantasy.

       Before we dismiss the gospel as complete fantasy, let me make three points. If you don’t believe that intelligent human life has a provenance beyond this planet, then you believe that intelligent life formed randomly from the stuff of the earth; that carbon and magnesium and a couple of dozen other chemicals came together in just the right proportions in a pond, lightening struck it, and voilà! Several million years later you have Hamlet lamenting, “O what a rogue and peasant slave am I.” Talk about science fiction, talk about fantasy. As one Nobel laureate put it, the chances that this universe, hospitable to human life, happened randomly are equal to the chances that a wind could blow through a junkyard and produce a fully assembled Boeing 747. There is no cult in the history of mankind more superstitious than that of the modern dogmatic secular atheist, who clings to the absurdist view of life despite all the evidence against it.

       Which leads to the second point: I don’t criticize those who believe in extra-terrestrial intelligence. I also believe that there is a greater intelligence beyond the confines of this planet. But you’re not going to find it by looking through a telescope. The message of Christmas is one to which those who believe in such things should be receptive, because the Christmas message is that the greatest intelligence in the universe, that which conceived of the universe and formed it, the very source of life itself has revealed himself to us. We don’t have to search the stars for the answer to our question,” From where did intelligent life originate?” The magi who were led by a star to Bethlehem already did that. We know that an extra-terrestrial mind conceived the universe; because the author of life has revealed himself to us. The mind of God, that which was in the beginning, before there was time or a material universe—"the Eternal Word," Saint John called him—has come among us and spoken to us. Or, as the writer of the letter to the Hebrews put it, ”In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world…upholding the universe by his word of power” (Heb.1.1–3). The difference between those who search for extra-terrestrial intelligence and those who believe in Jesus Christ is that those who believe in Jesus Christ have already found what the others are vainly searching for.

      Three: Unlike those who search for higher forms of intelligence in the universe or who document encounters with space aliens, the gospel of Jesus Christ doesn’t seek to prove anything. The gospel only seeks to give a faithful account to what happened in Galilee two–thousand years ago, to be an honest witness to a historic event. “You shall… be my witnesses” Jesus said to his disciples before he ascended by his own volition into heaven. That a man who just six weeks earlier had died in a public crucifixion, witnessed by the city of Jerusalem, could stand among his friends and talk to them before ascending into heaven from whence he had come thirty-three years earlier, is a tale taller than the wildest science fiction. Why should anyone believe this? The answer the church has made to a doubting world for twenty centuries is just this: believe the gospel because it’s true. God really did this.

      “Did what?” you ask again incredulously. The Word, that is eternal God, became flesh and dwelt among us (John1.14). That’s what happened when Christ was born in Bethlehem. The task of the church is not to prove it. But to faithfully proclaim it. To tell generation after generation what happened, so that they will know who God is and where to find him.

       But what if no one believes you because your story is so preposterous?  It doesn’t matter.  If it’s the truth, keep proclaiming it. The elect, those “who have ears to hear” as Jesus said, will hear and believe. As in the parable of the sower who just aimlessly throws the seeds wherever, God does the rest. And so it is with preaching the gospel. Our task as a church is to tell the story. God knows in whose heart the gospel will find a home.

      God knew this was going to be the case, that people would roll their eyes and laugh in the face of the dogma of the incarnation, of a Virgin birth announced by angels, of a star over Bethlehem, of scriptures fulfilled, of that same child born of Mary rising from his grave by his own volition, thereby revealing his divine nature. God knew the world would laugh. He said through the prophets, “I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told” (Hab.1.5). Many have been told what Jesus accomplished on the cross, many don’t believe.

     Saint John, who witnessed Jesus’s baptism, stood beside his mother at the foot of the cross, and three days later saw him alive, said of that revelation, “We beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son of the Father (John1.14). ”Moses longed to see the glory of God but it was denied him (Ex.33.18–23). What was denied to Moses, Christ privileged his apostles to see (John 1.18). Saint John would say again in his first letter: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we saw it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—that which we have seen and heard we proclaim to you” (1John 1.1–3).

     That is the Christmas message. Now we know. And there is only one follow-up question that matters: now that we know what happened, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to walk away, pretending that the Christmas story is the theological equivalent of science fiction fantasy? Or will we do the right thing? Respond in faith to God. Open your heart to receive his grace, the forgiveness of sins that he offers us in his Son Jesus Christ. Make it your New Year’s resolution to come to church to worship the Lord each Sunday and to do more to grow in knowledge and love of him. There’s always more to do. Why not, this year, come to the Bible Study? Give it a try. Or, as I suggested in the Christmas Eve sermon, read the book Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. No book does a better job of explaining why we believe in God and why we trust the Christmas story. We worship a wonderful God who really does love us. Make it your resolution to love him. Let us together make that resolution and keep it with daily, fervent prayer; and a year from now we will all look back as a church and say, “2017 was the best year ever; a year in which we all grew closer to God!”