3rd Sunday in Advent, December 16, 2007 “Series A”
Grace be unto you and peace, from God our Father and from our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Let us pray: Dear Heavenly Father, during this season of Advent, help us to recognize that you are true to your promise to redeem us from our sin and death. Through the power of your Holy Spirit, help us to recognize through eyes of faith, that in the person of Jesus the Christ, we behold your presence, and enable us to embrace him as our savior from sin and death. This we ask, in Christ’s holy name. Amen.
During my internship, in which I served in one of the largest Lutheran congregations in Upstate New York, I was surprised to hear from several faithful members of the congregation, how often Pastor Joslyn repeated his sermon illustrations. In fact, it was even brought up three times at a roast that was held in his honor, when he left the congregation to take another call. At the time, I thought, “Now here’s a lesson, Ron. Don’t repeat your illustrations. People remember your illustrations and stories, even though they may not remember the rest of your sermon.”
Well, this morning I’m going to follow in Pastor Joslyn’s footsteps, and share with you a story from my past that I have shared with you before, but I do promise you that the rest of the sermon is new in thought.
Less than a year after I was ordained, I received a phone call from the late Bishop Kenneth May. He called to ask me to serve as a member of the registration committee for the upcoming synod assembly, giving me the impression that this might be a way of getting to know the other pastors in our synod. Having just been ordained, I was Naïve enough to believe him.
The truth is, that when you serve on the registration committee, you don’t have time to get to know anybody. It is one of those task-oriented jobs, that quickly becomes routine, especially as the lines of delegates form ten or more deep in front of you. No one wants to stand at the registration desk and chat. They don’t really care who you are. They just want to check in, get their room key, and unpack before the first session begins.
Well, it didn’t take long for me to settle into this routine. I would look up at the next person in line, smile and say welcome to the assembly, and then ask what conference the person represented in order to determine what page I had to turn to on the pre-registration forms. Then I would ask their name, cross it off with a highlighter, give them their room key, meal tickets, identification badge, a packet of additional information, and finally ask if I could help them with any questions they might have.
It didn’t take me more than a half an hour for to become proficient at the task at hand. But then, this smartly dressed pastor, who had waited in line for over ten minutes, stood before me. When it was his turn, I simply looked up to him, welcomed him to the assembly, and then asked him what conference he represented, dropping my eyes to the roster of registered pastors for the assembly. Without a moment’s hesitation, I heard this finely dressed pastor say to me, “I think I represent all the conferences.”
At that point, I received a sharp knee jab from my colleague to my left, who whispered in my ear, “It’s Dr. Crumley.” In a second, I stood, and apologized for not recognizing the Presiding Bishop of the church to which I was ordained, the Lutheran Church in America. I apologized for getting so caught up in my own agenda, that I failed to recognize him.
Dr. Crumley graciously accepted my apology, and in fact, several times during the assembly, he approached me in conversation, always addressing me by name, asking my thoughts about the ongoing debates. The only time he did not refer to me by name, was when he began his address to the assembly, sharing his registration experience. The whole assembly laughed, including me, whom he enabled to feel and realize his gracious forgiveness.
I think John the Baptist had a similar experience. If you think about it, John had a registration task to perform – that of preparing people to accept the kingdom of God, through the coming of God’s promised Messiah. And oh, did John take his task seriously. He proclaimed his message as a matter of routine, regardless of who stood before him. To the Pharisees, and scribes, even priests and kings, his message was the same as to the common people. “Repent! For the kingdom of God is coming among you.”
And if you recall our lesson from last Sunday, John’s message was sharp and to the point, steeped in the tradition of the prophets of years past, who called people to embrace the law and moral code of Moses, in order to avoid the wrath of God.
“Do not presume that because you are children of Abraham that you have any claims on to God’s coming kingdom,” John warned. “God can raise up a new people from stones, if he wants. His winnowing fork is now in his hands. He’s going to toss you to the wind, and only those who repent and embrace God’s laws will fall back to the threshing floor. The rest will be blown away and burned.” And because John was so consumed with his message, because he showed no partiality, even to Herod, he was put in prison.
Can you imagine John’s confusion, when he heard that Jesus spent most of his time talking with persons who were expelled from their synagogue and home because of their sinfulness. This locust and wild honey eater must have been stunned by the fact that Jesus drank wine, ate when he felt like it, even if it meant breaking the Sabbath law.
Frederick Buechner, in his commentary on our text, makes the point about as well as it can be made. “Where John preached grim justice and pictured God as a steely-eyed thresher of grain, Jesus preached forgiving love and pictured God as the host of a marvelous party. Where John said people had better save their skins before it was too late, Jesus said it was God who saved their skins, and even if you blew your whole bankroll on liquor and sex, like the Prodigal Son, it still wasn’t too late. Where John ate locust and honey in the wilderness, Jesus ate what he felt like in Jerusalem with as sleazy a bunch as you could expect to find.” End quote.
It’s little wander, then, that John, who spent his life calling people to repent of their sins and prepare for the coming of God’s kingdom and the promised Messiah, had difficulty recognizing Jesus as the fulfillment of his ministry. And so John sends some of his disciples to ask Jesus the question that is put before us all today. “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”
Now we might have expected Jesus to be somewhat disturbed by John’s failure to recognize him as the Christ, especially since John was the one who was sent to prepare people to receive him. But he wasn’t! He responded to John’s failure to recognize him with the same grace and forgiveness that Dr. Crumley embraced me the day I failed to recognize him.
Jesus responded to John’s question by quoting Isaiah’s prediction that when God acts to establish his kingdom, it will be marked by marvelous reversals. Again, in Buechner’’ terms, Jesus sent John’s disciples back to tell him: “There are people who have sold their seeing-eye dogs and have taken up bird watching… There are people who have traded in their walkers for hiking boots… The down-and-out have turned into the up-and-coming…” End quote.
Even though in prison, Jesus asserts that John is the greatest of the prophets, the one who was to proceed the coming of God’s kingdom, and as such, the last prophet of the old moral order! John belongs tot he time of the Old Covenant. But with the advent of Jesus the Christ, God’s New Covenant has come, and with it, a new order in which we can behold the forgiving grace of God.
This past Tuesday, Pastor Blair and I attended a study session hosted by Lutherlyn, which featured Loren Mead, founder of the Alban Institute, and author of several books, including The Once And Future Church. The main point of Dr. Mead’s lecture was the fact that there are certain times in history in which conditions emerge which require a shift, in how the church defines itself and its ministry.
According to Dr. Mead, the Christian Church has already undergone three major shifts in how it understands its mission and ministry, since it was born through the incarnation of Jesus the Christ. Today, he asserts, we are in the process of another major shift taking place within the Church, one brought about by how we come to perceive reality.
Although Dr. Mead pointed out that none of us present would live to see the completion of this shift, or totally understand where God’s Spirit is leading the church for the future, through his understanding of history, he left me with a sense of hope. For the church is in God’s hands, not our own.
And is this not what took place, with our Lord’s first Advent to earth! God was present, in the person of Jesus the Christ, and as a result of our Lord’s incarnation, a major shift happened, in how people came to see and understand their relationship with God. It is no wander that John had to ask the question that he did.
But regardless of how the church may tweak and change how it perceives and understands its ministry through the years, the question that John asks today, will always be before the church. For the church will cease to exist, if it does not recognize Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God.
May God’s Spirit continue to lead the Church into the future, as it inspires us to embrace Jesus as the Christ, the one whom God has sent for our redemption. For that is the basis of our ministry, regardless of the other changes that might emerge.
Amen.
