Telling Stories

John 1:29-42

I love to read or hear a good human interest story. Who doesn’t, right? Hearing the stories of random acts of kindness, or learning about people who have dedicated their lives to make life better for others is inspiring.

Reading the story about a person who saw a problem and then did something to address it, to improve lives or comfort those who are hurting, is welcome balm to all those other stories that surround us, frighten us, anger us or frustrate us. At least that’s how it works for me. When I read these stories, I’m seeking relief from the constant onslaught of troubling news and commentary that overwhelms me.

I’m looking for evidence that that stuff is not all there is to this world.

A weekly magazine I regularly read devotes space in every issue to a “Heroes Among Us” feature. Television news programs often dedicate a segment at least once a week to a person or organization that has done something out of the ordinary that is good, altruistic, generous, or creative, on behalf of those who needed help.

I recently found stories about a childless teacher and her husband who adopted a young student who needed the stability and care of a loving home when the foster system failed him; and a middle school student who created a way to provide food for other students whose only reliable meals came in the form of federally funded breakfast and lunches, they received, but only when school is in session – his project went viral.

There is the church that planted a garden on their property which now feeds scores of low income families with good, healthy fruits and vegetables and has inspired other churches and organizations to pursue sustainable growing methods, providing healthy foods to supplement their feeding programs; and the woman who adopts and trains shelter dogs to become therapy companions for returning vets who suffer from PTSD.

These stories and others like them often appear toward the end of the news program, or magazine issue. I don’t think it’s because they are considered unimportant by those who have control over content, but because they know, that after receiving all that other stuff, the bad and troubling stuff, we really, really need to receive good news. We need to be reminded that one person or organization can make a difference. We need to be reminded of goodness. We need hope and joy to have the last word.

With all the darkness with which we are surrounded, with the pain of  lost loved ones as well as the sadness of other losses, betrayals, our own failures and struggles, we need these stories of hope. Testifying to the good that overcomes the darkness and the evil in our world is vital.

Well, isn’t that what John the Baptist did too, as he witnessed to the coming of Jesus? He told those who gathered around him that God was sending light into the world to bring hope and healing to their darkness. In fact, earlier in this gospel, the evangelist writes that John the Baptist was sent from God for this very purpose – to testify to the light, to the reality of who Jesus is, so that everyone might believe in him.

The people to whom John the Baptist delivered this good news lived in a dark world. Their lives were hard. They lived under Roman oppression. It was hard to know who to trust. They were poor. It had been a long time since God had sent a prophet among them, and so they may have wondered if God had given up on them; why was God so silent in the midst of their suffering?

Then John the Baptist came along and people followed him because he gave people true hope. He told his disciples that God has not forsaken them but is sending one to live among them who will be the fleshly embodiment of God himself.

John the Baptist testified that as God’s kingdom enters the world through this messiah, God’s mercy and justice will come upon the earth as well.

And then one day, as John was baptizing people in the Jordan River, Jesus himself appeared, to be baptized by John, and to begin his ministry among these people.

Last week, we remembered this key moment in the life of Jesus, which parallels a key moment in which the light of God breaks through and shines on each of us, in our own baptism.

We talked about the parallels between Jesus’ baptism and our own, and we gave thanks for baptism, the wonder-filled, grace-filled experience we share with our Lord. We even got a little wet as we were sprinkled with water from the baptismal font. We thought about how magnificent it is that we get to share this experience with Jesus.

We remembered that at the very moment when Jesus emerged from the water of the Jordan River at his baptism, the Holy Spirit descended and alighted on him; and the voice of God was heard as God declared, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

Right after the water is sprinkled or poured or a person is dunked in the baptismal waters, we hear the words: “Child of God, you are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.” A promise is made as a cross is traced in oil upon the forehead – ‘Child of God – you are beloved – I will never leave you or forsake you.’

A small child won’t remember the day of their baptism or the claim God makes unless the rest of us testify to the momentous event. A child will learn of the love of God as we remind them and show them over and over again how much God loves us. They will learn the way of Jesus as they hear the Good News shared, and experience God’s love from all the Jesus-following light-bearers who surround them and show them the way of Christ.

The story that makes up our gospel today happened the very day after Jesus was baptized. Perhaps John was standing around telling these two disciples of his about the amazing events that had occurred the day before. After all, that is what John the Baptist did so well. He witnessed to who Jesus was. He told the story of the identity of Jesus of Nazareth.

All of a sudden, as John saw Jesus coming toward him, he exclaimed, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

John is crystal clear about who Jesus is and what Jesus’ purpose is. John testifies. This is Jesus, the Messiah. This is the Lamb of God. This is he whom God has sent into the world as a light to the nations. This is he who takes away the sin of the world. Here is the Son of God. Follow him!

John’s disciples are curious. So they began to follow Jesus, to physically follow him, when Jesus turns around and looks at them. He addresses them, “What are you looking for?”

David Lose points out in his commentary on this passage that this is the first question Jesus asks in the gospel of John, in fact, they are the first words spoken by Jesus: “What are you looking for?” The question is ripe with possibilities. Jesus may just as well be asking us, “What are you seeking?” “What do you hope to find?” “What do you need?” “What do you long for?” “What do you most hope for?”

We could go back to those human interest stories to find our answer. Perhaps we are seeking the good news in a world of bad. If so, Jesus is the good news. Perhaps we are looking for relief from the burdens that weigh us down. Jesus frees us from sin so that we can follow him more closely, unencumbered by its weight.

Perhaps we hope to find the answers we need to solve the problems of the world, or even just to survive them. Jesus shows us the way to truth and love, and invites us to testify to their power. In the ministry inaugurated at his baptism, Jesus showed us how to serve others with compassion, mercy, and humility.

Perhaps we long for a day when peace and justice will rule. Jesus shows us that while evil forces are loose in the world, they will not have the final word. Even death is defeated by Jesus’ coming into the world, through his life, death, resurrection and ascension. Then, Jesus invites us to take part in the work of sharing his vision of peace and justice for all people by the choices we make and the way we live.

Perhaps we simply hunger to see the goodness of God at loose in the world. Jesus invites us to look around and see clearly that God is present in simple acts of feeding the hungry and clothing the naked; in welcoming the stranger and embracing our neighbors with kindness and love; in sitting with shelter residents and sewing quilts for refugees. God is seen when news is shared of a family in need and people come forward in prayer, offering material support and Christmas gifts. God is seen in the nurse that works long past her shift to care for those under her charge, or in the health care aide who sits and feeds the woman who can no longer feed herself; or in the first responders who place themselves in harm’s way in an attempt to preserve and save lives.

In the text for today Jesus asks, “What are you looking for?” and then issues the invitation, “come and see.”

We have the greatest human interest story of all to share as we give witness to the love of God and the mercy of Jesus Christ. In word and action we get to share that story, the story of God’s wondrous love revealed in Jesus.

I leave you with a poem attributed to the sixteenth century mystic, Teresa of Avila:

Christ has no body now on earth but yours,

          no hands but yours,

Yours are the eyes through which to look out

          Christ’s compassion to the world;

Yours are the feet with which

          he is to go about doing good;

Yours are the hands

with which he is to bless men now. 

Amen.

Comfort the Afflicted; Afflict the Comfortable

Matthew 3:1-12

            You brood of vipers! It’s not every day you hear a greeting like that, but if you did, I wonder how many of you would flock to hear the preacher who belted out those words, the next week. In our gospel text, John the Baptist indeed blurted out those words, directed at the Pharisees and Sadducees.  He was one of those preachers - the kind who doesn’t mince words. He told it like it was, or at least, like he saw it.

            Perhaps John went to the preaching school with the motto, “comfort the afflicted; afflict the comfortable.” I’m told that this is what all good preachers do. And I confess that all too often I feel unequal to the challenge.

You see, it’s tempting to make the Gospel good news of grace into a one-dimensional message of comfort and reassurance. We all need comfort and reassurance, and when we look at our lives, at the world around us, it seems we need buckets of it.

When we acknowledge the depth of our own brokenness, when we witness the heinous things human beings say and do to one another, we want a word of comfort. As we absorb our losses and pain, we need the comfort and consolation that comes from God. Comforting the afflicted I can do, and I have the good news of the gospel on my side.

But afflict the comfortable? That, I confess I struggle with.

But when John the Baptist burst onto the scene of 1^st century Palestine, he didn’t have my problem. While pointing to the one who is coming, he indeed afflicted the comfortable;

He challenged those who depended on their own righteousness more than they depended on God. The Pharisees fell into that category. They felt they were specially endowed and privileged by virtue of their ancestry. They followed the Laws of Moses, they claimed the patriarch Abraham as their ancestor, and therefore they claimed righteousness as their own.

The problem is, while they claimed to follow the law, they failed to bear the fruit worthy of repentance. In other words, they talked the talk but often failed to walk the walk. They neglected the relational part of the life of the faithful; to live with love, mercy, and compassion for the poor at the core of their being.

All too frequently they ignored the plight of the widow, the orphan and the stranger, they persecuted the foreigner, and the immigrant and they assumed their own importance. They turned a blind eye and became indifferent to the needs of those around them, and in Matthew’s gospel these are the one we consider the least, the last, the lost, the little and the lifeless. They forgot about addressing the injustice around them and caring for those who were disadvantaged and vulnerable. Instead, they stewed in the juices of their own well-being.

Then along came John the Baptist, and he preached a call for repentance out there in the wilderness; and this repentance involves a reorienting of one’s heart, way of thinking, and action. Real repentance, the kind of which John spoke and Jesus taught, brings us in line with godly living, and godly living bears fruit for the kingdom of God. This kind of repentance and attention to the circumstances of those around you, matters deeply to God.

            Repentance in this gospel is about such godly living. We get a glimpse of what that might look like when we consider the characteristics of those Jesus calls “blessed” in the Sermon on the Mount which follows soon after this passage in the Gospel of Matthew.

The Sermon on the Mount describes how God blesses the poor, the humble, those who mourn, those who thirst for justice, those who are meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those persecuted for righteousness sake. Indeed, not only are they – all those - the blessed ones, according to Jesus, but throughout this Gospel they are the ones with whom Jesus hangs out. This is the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In Christ, the least are raised up, because their lives, their welfare, and their personhood matter.

As John stands in the wilderness, he preaches the good news that the kingdom of heaven has come near, and he bids those who have come out to hear this news to prepare themselves, to prepare their hearts, to receive the one who bears this kingdom to the world. John points to the good news. He points to the one who will deliver and embody kingdom life, Jesus, Our Savior.

It is for this reason that in pieces of art, John the Baptist is almost always painted pointing to Jesus. When Lukas Cranach the Elder painted Martin Luther, he substituted Luther in that pose, with Luther in the pulpit, pointing to Christ on the cross in the tradition of John the Baptist. Pointing toward Jesus, John the Baptist shines the light on the one God sends into the world to redeem it, the one who comes into the world to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.  

As we come to the manger, we must remember the cross. For it is on the cross that God demonstrates for us how much it matters that Jesus came for the sake of the least in the kingdom.

Late Yale Divinity School preaching professor William Muehl told this story to illustrate what Christ bringing this kingdom into being means:

“One December afternoon…a group of parents stood in the lobby of a nursery school waiting to claim their children after the last pre-Christmas class session. As the youngsters ran from their lockers, each one carried in his hands the “surprise,” the brightly wrapped package on which he had been working diligently for weeks. One small boy, trying to run, put on his coat, and wave to his parents, all at the same time, slipped and fell. The “surprise” flew from his grasp, landed on the floor and broke with an obvious ceramic crash.

The child…began to cry inconsolably. His father, trying to minimize the incident and comfort the boy, patted his head and murmured, “Now, that’s all right son. It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter at all.”

But the boy’s mother, somewhat wiser in such situations, swept the boy into her arms and said, “Oh, but it does matter. It matters a great deal.” And she wept with her son.”[1]

            In Jesus, God becomes the one who, rather than patting us on our head to console us, joins us in our suffering, as did that mother,  because the pain in this world, our pain, does matter – it matters a great deal.

            Our lives do matter to God. Christ’s coming does matter. How we prepare for him does matter. Repentance, that is, opening our hearts, making adjustments to our lives, bringing our lives into communion with God’s purposes in God’s kingdom come, does matter.

John’s cry of repentance is the call to turn away from our indifference to engage, at a life-changing level. The coming kingdom reorders our relationships and priorities. John’s words are words a challenge to us all. Do we care enough to change our lives and the world in which we live?

Do we love enough to get angry about the suffering and plight of other human beings and to declare that broken dreams and broken lives do matter, they matter very much? Are our hearts aligned with God’s enough to declare that this is true for every child of God, even if we’ve never met them?God cares.

That’s why divine wrath, axes, and fire are good news. God loves enough to get angry. The good news is that God is not indifferent. God is not indifferent to creation, nor to the evil and suffering in this world. God is not indifferent to God’s people. God is not indifferent to your life or my life.

God’s concern and love for creation are the source of God’s anger. Anger is not the opposite of love. Indifference is the opposite of love. The last thing we need is more indifference. The last thing we need is to hear from another that our very existence doesn’t matter. And God forbid that we should ever say or act as if another’s very existence is of no consequence to us.

            So, that’s what we’re about this season of Advent.  Our Advent worship, Advent hymns, Advent expectations, and Advent comforts bring us the reminder that John the Baptist makes so clear. We need to prepare. Our Advent activities, prayers and behaviors point to Christ’s coming. They help us focus. They bring about a different emphasis to our lives. They help us open our hearts and prepare room not only for the Christ child to enter in, but for the comfort of all God’s people.

            Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable. Prepare for the one who comes, the one who will make all things new, who will bring about newly formed hearts, who will call us to new understandings to reorient ourselves, to turn from our former ways to change our attitude and perceptions.

            Repentance is about God’s desire to realign us to accord with Christ’s life. Repentance is about God’s power to transform us into Christ’s image, and it is a transformation worth preparing for.  

            And so, John’s wilderness sermon points beyond him and toward God and what God is doing. John the Baptist points to Jesus. Advent points to Jesus’ coming. The texts point to the reality that Jesus is bringing a changed way of living, thinking, understanding, operating.

How do we, in our lives today, do the same? How do our lives point to God and what God, in love for humankind and all of creation, is doing? How does it make a difference?

Whatever our message, our lives, our witness might be, it must point to Jesus. We do not point to the church, but to the gospel. We do not point to what we are doing but to what God is able to do through and despite us.

Our lives must point ever and always to Jesus. Today, as we lit the second candle of the Advent wreath, we sang, “Christ be our light, Shine in our hearts, shine through the darkness….Make us your own, your holy people, light for the world to see….Christ be our light!” May it be so, that in true repentance, our lives might reflect the light and love of God in Christ Jesus, not only in this holy season, but throughout our year and our lives.

Amen.

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[1] William Muehl, Why Preach? Why Listen? (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 82.