Repentance

The Third Sunday After the Epiphany

A Sermon based on Matthew 4:12-23

In the name of Jesus; amen.

John preached repentance and that is why he is arrested. King Herod had married his murdered brother’s wife, Herodias, and John had bee telling him that it was not lawful for him to have her. John wanted him to repent, but Herod wanted to keep his new wife.

Jesus hears of John’s arrest and takes over the message that John had been preaching, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

Repentance was the message Jesus chose to begin his preaching ministry.

Repentance comes first. It is the first step in following Jesus. It is the first step in living a life with God.

But do you really think you need to repent? And if so, for what and to whom?

There are some people out there who think they don’t need to repent just as there are probably some out there who believe there is something in your past that you don’t think you can be forgiven for. I’ve met both, people who don’t think they are all that bad and people who believe in their hearts that they are destined for hell. Perhaps there are even some right here in this room.

There are dangers in both ways of thinking.

To believe that God cannot forgive you is to believe that God is not all powerful; it makes your sins bigger than God and nothing is bigger than God.

We are supposed to trust in God and God’s promises and we have been promised forgiveness, so if there is something in your heart that is weighing you down it’s time to give it to God, to repent and trust that God forgives you and begin a new life as a forgiven person.

And if you are pretty sure that you have nothing to repent for it’s time to search your hearts as well because only God is perfect. Each one of us falls short each and every day and we rely on God’s grace to make us holy and forgiven.

Before we worship God we begin with confession and forgiveness (yes, sometimes we give thanks for our baptisms, but the point of that is not to skip over repentance, but to remember the promises of forgiveness in baptism.) Confession and forgiveness prepare us for singing the hymns, and saying the prayers, and hearing the word, and eating the meal.

Repentance prepares us to worship and forgiveness makes us worthy to come before God in worship.

But we don’t just repent in order to participate in this hour of so of our weeks. Repentance signals our need for God in our lives in each and every second of them. Repentance clears our hearts and allows light to glow in us and emanate from us. It is the light that we are given in baptism along with these words:

“Let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”

We don’t just repent for our own sakes, but for the sake of God being glorified.

God is glorified when we are forgiven and then live in that forgiveness. While God makes promises to us in our baptism, we are also called to make promises to God that we will live lives of mission and purpose.

This past Tuesday I attended something called a listening day with other clergy from the New England Synod. The first part of the day was spent listening to the Bishop as she reflected on the writings of an Old Testament theologian named Walter Brueggemann.

In the discussion that followed she talked about how the rituals of other religions were meant to daily remind the people that they were specifically Jewish or Muslim or whatever they were. The question was asked: What do we do daily, as Christians, to remember that we are Christians?

Each morning Martin Luther would wake up and wash his face and remember his baptism, in doing so I think he probably also remembered that he was a sinner who was forgiven.

What do you do each day that reminds you of your need for God? And does that need translate into the rest of your day?

The fishermen who followed Jesus gave up their regular lives of casting nets into the sea and in the process they lived lives which reminded them daily that they belonged to God. Their light became the light that shone throughout the centuries and witnessed to us.

We are Christians because they daily remembered their call to fish for people. We too have been called to be light, to remember daily that we are sinners in need of forgiveness that God grants us through our baptism into Christ Jesus.

May that light shine in all of us each and every day, not just for our own sake, but for the sake of others. Amen.

The Second Sunday After the Epiphany Year A

A sermon based on 1 Corinthians 1:1-9

“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus.”

So, Paul begins his letter to the church in Corinth by lifting up the people there: “I give thanks to my God always for you”, but Paul’s letter is not intended to be a happy-feely kind of correspondence. The people at Corinth had some real issues: they fought with one another, they didn’t know how to share, they constantly tried to one up each other on who was baptized by whom, they were surrounded by Roman temples, including one to Aphrodite where prostitution was prevalent, and the women wouldn’t stop talking in church.

It’s not surprising then that the very next verse of scripture after our reading today is Paul telling the people that they need to get along with one another:

“Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose.”

It doesn’t always happen, but many times the assigned scripture for the day has perfect timing. This reading seems appropriate when we consider that following this worship we will head downstairs for lunch and our congregational meeting.

I want to take Paul’s words as a warning that despite our differences, our disagreements, and the dangers that surround us that we be of one mind when it comes to our purpose as a church. We are here to bring the good news of Christ Jesus or as our mission statement says, “To proclaim Christ through worship, fellowship, and caring for our neighbor.”

But Paul’s words also offer hope and assurance that we too have been enriched in Christ, in speech and knowledge of every kind… that we are not lacking in any spiritual gifts as we wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.

As we give our worship to God this morning we prepare for the decisions we need to make as a congregation in our meeting. This worship we give to God because worship is primarily a thing we do for God. While it might offer us strength and fellowship, and reassurance of God’s forgiveness it is an act we do to please God.

We worship God, not traditions, or music, or our time together, but God. This can be a difficult concept to understand: we are not here for us, but because God commands it and wants it from us. And strangely enough when we make worship about what we do for God this also becomes a time for us when we are renewed.

I’d like for us to take that same attitude and understanding to the meeting we have and to the time we have during our meal; that we make this time, time that we give to God and decisions we make as we choose our leaders and as we choose how to budget our money, decisions we give to God out of our love for God.

Later in 1 Corinthians 13 Paul writes about love, God’s love for us. He tells us that without love we have nothing.

“1 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”

We have God’s love, given to us through the grace of God in Christ Jesus, the Lamb of God, the Messiah. It is through God’s grace that we are a church and part of the family of God. It is because of God’s love and grace that we are given purpose and possibility.

May that purpose and possibility be in everything we do, not just in our worship, or in our meeting, or in our fellowship with one another, but in every aspect of our lives so that the love and grace of God might be proclaimed throughout the world.

Amen.

The Voice of God

The Baptism of Our Lord Year A

A sermon based on Psalm 29; Acts 10:34-43, and Matthew 3:13-17

In the name of Jesus; amen.

At the beginning of time God spoke and when God spoke the world and all that was in it was created.

God only needed to speak and everything humanity needed was made: night and day; things that swim and things that fly; trees and plants; animals and people.

God spoke and we were given everything.

The Psalmist writes: “The voice of the Lord is a powerful voice; the voice of the Lord is a voice of splendor.”

It might make sense then to believe that listening to the voice of God is important.

Scripture, which we call the word of God, teaches us that God walked and talked with the first people in the garden, but when sin entered the world the voice of God became harder to hear.

It became a whisper, a mumble except to some that God chose to speak clearly to: the patriarchs and matriarchs who listened and followed what God’s voice told them, Moses who brought God’s law to the people, and then the prophets who spoke God’s word of righteousness to kings and to paupers.

God’s voice has spoken throughout our faith history, sometimes clearer than others. It has been heard and it has misheard. It has been welcomed and it has been rejected, but God’s voice continues to speak.

In today’s gospel, God speaks clearly and openly as Jesus comes up out of the waters of the Jordan River: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

God speaks and claims Jesus as the Beloved, the one who pleases.

God spoke and everything we needed was created. God speaks and everything that God wants us to know is proclaimed in the person of Jesus Christ whom the gospel writer John tells us is the Word.

God speaks creation into being and then God speaks love and grace into our lives through the person of Jesus, the Beloved, the one who pleases.

Jesus, the one who spoke God’s presence into our world through the cries and coos of a baby; Jesus, the one who spoke God’s justice into our world through the proclamation of God’s impartial grace; Jesus, the one who spoke God’s healing into the world through the laying on of hands of the sick; Jesus, the one who spoke God’s forgiveness into the world from the cross; Jesus, the one who spoke God’s love into the world through the empty tomb, this is the one who pleases God.

God’s pleasure is that we might hear the voice of power and splendor through the person of Jesus who preached peace and wholeness and lived and died so that we might know God.

Do you hear the voice of God because the Word of God, Jesus Christ, lives on through us in our baptism. We are baptized into Christ so that Christ is in us.

It is a strange and wonderful thing that it is the Word of God that changes ordinary water into the waters of baptism that wash us and unite us with Christ and one another. And being united with Christ means that God’s voice speaks to us from heaven as well, “These are my sons and daughters, Beloved, and pleasing to me.”

God speaks and we are recreated into beloved children. The powerful voice of splendor speaks to us that we are loved. This is the word that God wants us to know. Hear it clearly: we are the beloved of God. Jesus came into the world and went down into the waters and was hung up on a cross and rose up from the dead so that we might hear the voice of God in our lives each and every day.

God loves us, we belong to God. Amen.

Gifts

The Feast of the Epiphany

A Sermon based on Matthew 2:1-12

In the name of Jesus; amen.

Typically we think of the season of Christmas as the season of giving, but it is on this day of the Feast of the Epiphany when we remember the gifts that were given to Christ child.

There is quite a bit of tradition concerned with this time. Tradition leads us to believe that three kings named, Casper, Melchior, and Balthazar visited the stable on the night that Jesus was born and presented three gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. But the truth is that we don’t know the actual names of the magi who visited Jesus. They were not kings, but astrological advisors to royalty. They arrived about two years after the birth of Jesus and visited them in a home, not the stable. And while there could have been three of them there could have been more.

I really like this story though; I even like the traditions that the church has assigned to it. I like that these magi come from other nations and that they typically look, in art, like they have come from other nations. And while I love that in Luke’s gospel it is shepherds who are the first to receive the good news of great joy there is something really cool about the fact that Matthew has gentile astrologers as the first worshippers of the King of the Jews.

The gifts that they bring him as tribute add to the story. They had value to the magi who might also have used the spices in divination which was part of their job. The gold, frankincense and myrrh had symbolic significance: gold was a precious metal and used to represent kings, frankincense which was used by priests in worship because when it burned the smoke from the incense rose to the heaven like prayer and myrrh which was used to anoint the dead. The gifts also had a practical use. When the holy family flees to Egypt they most likely used these gifts for money for their trip and to live for those years before it was safe to return home.

But there are even more subtle meanings to this story that make it one of my favorites.

Magi understood stars. Magi looked for and understood signs in the sky. A special star or other astrological event made sense to them. Matthew tells us that the Magi came from the east and that they saw the star in the east. The sign came to them where they were. God got their attention in a way that they understood and in the place where they were at.

Then there is the fact that the Magi first go to Herod. Why do they do that? Why didn't the star lead them directly to Jesus? It doesn't say that the star led them to Herod. My guess is that the star "told" them that a new king had been born. Then they assumed that if a new king had been born, he must come from the royal family. He would probably be born in the capital city. They assumed wrong. The star got their attention. The star gave them some information, but it led them to false assumptions.

The king they were looking for didn’t live in a palace, but in a little home in a little town and they found that place by talking to Herod’s religious scholars who told them about the prophet Micah who wrote, “But you, O Bethlehem, who are little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.”

Then there is the fact that Magi in Jesus' day were not actually "wise men". They were not models of religious piety. They were magicians, astronomers, star-gazers, pseudo-scientists, fortune-tellers, horoscope fanatics; but Matthew makes them the heroes in his first story following Jesus’ birth. They are heretics who most likely came from the area which is now modern-day Iraq and which was once Babylon, a nation which had been an enemy to Israel.

The first worshippers of Christ descended from his people’s enemies.

There is nothing simple about this story about the men who visit the toddler Jesus and bring him gifts that would have suprised and awed his parents. There is nothing usual or ordinary or expected about the epiphany just as there is nothing usual or ordinary or expected about God or the gifts that God gives to us.

These stories of the birth and life and death and resurrection are unexpected.
We might think we know the stories of a birth in a stable and a visit by wise men teach us over and over that God comes in ways that we need most. That God comes in humble conditions, or in signs and stars, or on a cross should surprise and excite us.

As old as these stories are, as familiar as they are they come to us new each time as gifts meant to sustain us where we are, but they are also meant to take us out of the places where we are stuck. The magi saw the star and got up and travelled far away to find the one they would worship and then went home by another road.

This too has another meaning. Yes, they went a different way to avoid Herod, but what they saw and experienced changed them. The road home was not just a physically different road, but a different path through their lives.

In this season of Epiphany and God’s revelation my hope and prayer is that we all find God in unexpected and wonderous ways. I hope and pray that those ways are illumined by the light of Christ and that we aren’t just the recepients of the gift of God’s grace, but that we also are blessed with moments of sharing and giving that grace to others.

Amen.