[Sermon preached on 7 October 2018, 21st Sunday after Pentecost / 3rd year, ELCF Lectionary]
I am sure you must have heard the term “fake news” a good deal lately. As long as mankind has lived on this planet, people have been manipulating information in order to misguide others for their own benefits. And not just people. Serpents have done that just as well. At least one serpent—“the” Serpent—Satan in disguise.
In the third chapter of the Bible, Genesis 3, we read about the Serpent misinforming and misguiding Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden. His purpose was to sow conflict between mankind and God, and between man and woman. He twisted the words that God had spoken earlier to Adam and Eve to take on a different meaning. He made Adam and Eve doubt whether what God had said was true, and whether God had the power and the authority to impose his will and his discipline on them—and to punish them, if they disobeyed him. In the end, Adam and Eve believed the Serpent more than God. They rebelled against God. They freed themselves from their relationship of dependence, aiming to be their own gods—with catastrophic consequences.
The manipulation of information has always been a vital part of the struggle for power and wealth. In warfare, it was called propaganda. In trade, it is called advertising. There were times when the information at our disposal was quite limited and manageable. The most powerful manipulation of information was to withhold it from us. But in recent years, particularly with the rapid spread of internet and social media, we need to deal with virtually unlimited flows of information that come to us in ever more dazzling speed. And what is especially frightening: we don’t necessarily know any longer where the information is coming from or what it is intended to achieve.
US president Donald Trump popularized the term “fake news” in the past two years. Before that, we were warned of “trolls” from Russia trying to brainwash us—or at least to confuse us—in social media. Even some of the major news channels try to control our minds and opinions. By now, most of us are very well aware that we cannot trust any source of information by default. Every piece of information, every bit of commentary, needs to be assessed for truth and validity. But unfortunately, very few of us are able to do that well except perhaps when it comes to things, regions, or fields of expertise that we happen to be very familiar with.
It may surprise you to know that the situation was no different in the time of Jesus. The Gospel text puts us in the middle of a huge dispute over who Jesus really is and what should be done with him. Jesus made his own claims concerning his identity and his mission. He called upon the people to recognize him for who he claimed to be, and to follow in his footsteps. But not everybody was convinced. And his way of life and his teaching—however impressive and extraordinary—also raised a lot of eyebrows.
There were two sides to the debate.
Many people saw in Jesus a man of God. He exercised unusual and unnatural healing powers. They liked him. Some of them said he could be the Prophet that God had promised to Moses to follow in his steps. Others thought he was the Messiah, the descendant of king David, who would follow him up as king of Israel and establish a kingdom that would last forever.
But there was a lot of fierce opposition as well. The leaders of the Jewish people were sure that Jesus was a con. They had two substantial arguments against Jesus. The first was that he was from Galilee. Galilee was not where men of God would come from—no prophets, and certainly not “the Prophet. They also knew for sure, that the Messiah, the Son of David, would come from Bethlehem, not from Nazareth.
But for them there was more crucial evidence against Jesus. Certainly, Jesus did some very good things, like healing people and driving out demons. But he did them on a Sabbath, when God’s Law forbade the Jewish people to work. So, they concluded, a man from Galilee who constantly breaks the Sabbath command cannot be a man of God. Full stop.
In order to bring back law and order, the Jewish leaders sent armed temple guards to arrest Jesus and bring him to them for cross-examination and a quick trial. They wanted to prevent that the Romans, who occupied the land, would get alarmed and intervene in the internal affairs of the autonomous Jewish nation. And after all, Jesus was teaching in the Temple, where they called the shots.
But can you imagine the surprise and indignation of the leaders when the temple guards returned empty-handed!? When the leaders demanded an explanation, they simply said,
“No one ever spoke the way this man does.”
“No one ever spoke the way this man does.” There are two negations in this answer: “No one” and “never”. What Jesus said, and the way he said it, were so unique and overwhelming, that the temple guards simply could not go up to Jesus and arrest him. Jesus did not resort to clever rhetoric devices to capture his audience. He was not being overly theatrical, either. He did not capitalize on the latest findings in media and advertising. He simply was being himself, genuinely himself. He connected to his audience in a way that nobody really understood. He spoke from heart to heart.
“No one ever spoke the way this man does.” Jesus disarmed the temple guards not by violence or force, but by his words. The question forces itself upon us, how, then, did his words change their hearts—and, no doubt, of many other people there. Let me suggest three ways.
The first way that Jesus overwhelmed his audience was this: Jesus’ teaching was full of authority and truth. The evangelist Matthew writes that, after Jesus finished his famous Sermon on the Mount, “the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.”
Jesus was not a philosopher, who contemplated on questions of life on a deep and profound level and left his thoughts for others to meditate upon. He was not a teacher, who developed new models and theories about life, about religion, and about God. Jesus himself was God—and is God. His words were indeed God’s own words. And that is why they never failed to touch each person that came to Jesus with an open mind and an open heart.
Still today, when we read or hear the teaching of Jesus from the Gospels, we immediately sense how true his words are on a very deep and existential level. You simply cannot question his teaching with a good conscience. You simply cannot escape its message. Even after 2,000 years, it never ceases to address us and our lives, here and now. It hits the target every time again—exactly.
The Jewish leader Nicodemus noticed that when he came in the middle of the night to Jesus to discuss with him—and he was overwhelmed. The Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob noticed it when Jesus had asked her for a drink and then offered her the water of life. She, too, was overwhelmed. And no doubt, the temple guards who had come to arrest Jesus in the temple area, noticed it and were overwhelmed.
The letter to the Hebrews compares the word of God to a sharp and double-edged sword:
For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
When Jesus spoke words from God, full of divine authority and truth, that is exactly what happened—even to the temple guards.
The second way in which Jesus’ words overwhelmed the crowds and the temple guards is this: When Jesus spoke, his words and his way of connecting with his audience were full of love and compassion.
Some of you may disagree with that. It is true that his teaching can feel at times to be extremely tough, demanding and uncompromising. The Sermon on the Mount is just one example of radical teaching that may drive some sincere Christians to despair.
And yet, there is something gentle and compassionate about even the toughest challenges that Jesus sets before us. In that respect he was so different from the teachers of the law in his time, who set the demands of the law of Moses before the people as huge obstacles on the way to salvation. Following Jesus does come with a price tag—a huge price tag. Jesus asks us to give him our lives just as he gave his life for us. But when he compared his own demands to those of the teachers of the law, Jesus concluded,
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Jesus spoke to women and men whom society had rejected with words that communicated acceptance, forgiveness, reconciliation and hope. He healed those whose sickness no one else bothered to treat. He helped those who were too weak to help themselves. In his compassion, he gave new value and meaning to those whose lives were empty and meaningless. And that message of love and mercy still resounds in every corner of the world where Jesus’ message is preached in truth.
First, Jesus’ teaching was full of authority and truth. Secondly, his words were full of love and compassion. And thirdly, he spoke directly from heart to heart, from the Father heart of God to the heart of men and women. The creation story tells us that God created us in his own image. When God speaks from heart to heart, something inside us—his image, however damaged and disfigured it is—is bound to resonate.
In university, we were taught the basics of communication. Communication between two persons is a long process with a complicated dynamic and with many vulnerable steps. When I want to share with you something that is on my heart, I first need to conceptualize it—to form a thought in my mind. Next, I need to verbalize that thought—to put it in words. Those words need to be translated from my mother tongue to whatever language we have in common—most likely English. Then I need to write or speak those words to you sufficiently clearly, so that you can read or hear them precisely. When that message reaches your eyes or your ears, you need to repeat that process in the opposite direction. You need to translate it into your own language, conceptualize it into a thought, and then try to make your heart resonate and feel what I felt when the process started. When you respond, the whole process starts all over again. As you can imagine, there are so many things that can go wrong along the way, that it is almost a miracle that we are able to communicate at all.
But when Jesus speaks, he creates a direct hotline between the loving heart of God and our hearts. And we can experience that connection on a very deep and existential level, even though we cannot explain it. When Jesus speaks, you can sense God’s loving presence—you can almost touch him with your hands.
We all have our own reasons why we are here today. We all have our own reasons why we believe in Jesus or why we seek him. We all have our own history of faith and doubt, of trust in God and disappointment with God.
I know that some of you go through a time of doubt right now—a crisis of faith. You feel God is too far away or he just doesn’t connect when you need him most. You feel he does not answer when you call out to him. You feel let down and disappointed.
The worst thing we can do in times of crisis is to shut our ears, our eyes, and our hearts—to shut out Jesus from our lives. Even though he may not be doing or saying what we want him to do or say, he has not left our lives, and he is not passive or silent. In times of spiritual dryness and depression, it is enticing to just cut the ties with God, to stop reading the Bible and to stop praying. But it just makes things worse. God wants to stay connected with you. He wants to strengthen you and build you up in your faith. He wants you to recognize Jesus as your God, and Lord, and Savior—not just on an intellectual and theological level, but also on an existential and emotional level.
Today I want to encourage you and challenge you to continue to let God speak to you through the words of Jesus in the Gospels—or in any other way that he chooses to speak to you right now. Allow him to reveal his truth, his love and his heart to you.
God says in Psalm 46: “Be still and know that I am God!” If we take time to let him reveal his loving presence to us, if we calm down and be still and retreat from the pressures of day-to-day life, if we care to take what in some circles is called “Quiet Time” with the Lord, you will find that he is with you, and that he is in charge of your life, whatever your circumstances. Trust in him. Be still and know that he is God—your God. Amen.
