"Fulfill"

Rev. Matthew Miller

FROM THE GOSPELS Matthew 3:13-17 Click here to watch the sermon "Fulfill."

This past week a friend of mine who pastors a church in Western North Carolina posted a video of something he said at the conclusion of the worship service he led last week. He related a conversation that comes up among people tasked with preaching week to week about scrapping an already prepared sermon in order to respond to late-breaking news. Most of the preachers I know at one time or another have been admonished by the words of Karl Barth, that giant of 20^th century reformed theology best known for drafting the text for the Theological Declaration at Barmen. Barmen is one of our guiding confessions that was written in response to the rise of the Third Reich in Germany and its appropriation of Christian language and symbols to advance the sinful practice of Nationalism. Anyway, Barth is often invoked for saying that the task of the preacher is to proclaim God’s Word with the bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. It wasn’t enough, thought Barth, to repeat gentle platitudes about God and Faith and Jesus without taking seriously the ways in which God’s Word speaks to us where we are, and to what is happening in the world around us. So, the thinking goes, if something is making headlines in the news, we need to respond with God’s Word. Knowing my friend as I do, I think he was answering questions about why he had not more fully addressed last Saturday’s action by the US government in Venezuela in his sermon.  

Then I had a conversation with a church member in which we talked about the challenge of satisfying the needs and expectations of those who come to church. Some come wanting the church to speak boldly and prophetically in addressing current events. Others come seeking refuge from all of that. They feel overwhelmed by what’s going on in the world and simply want some measure of the peace we are promised by the gospel. A peace that is beyond our understanding, inundated as we are by the chaos that surrounds us. There’s no easy answer. In fact, my colleague in that video shared a story that he lifts often. His dad was also a pastor and they got to taking about the challenge and self-doubt that come with claiming to bring a Word from God to people in worship. His dad told him that he ever felt absolutely certain aboput what he was going to preach, that he ought to give his dad a call. “I’ll come preach for you,” his dad told him, “because you’re about to do real harm to the church.” We threaten real harm to the unity of the Spirit when we believe with absolute certainty that we have the truth when it comes to God, because that necessarily implies that someone else absolutely does not. The opposite of faith was never doubt. Those two go hand in hand. No, the opposite of faith is certainty. When we stop trusting what we cannot always see and substitute it for our own convictions, we have supplanted God with ourselves. 

So we have to be careful about the things we have to say about current events in the pulpit because we aren’t simply offering an opinion on the news, we’re making claims based on our understanding of God’s Word. 

Now, why am I going on about this? Well, it’s hard to write a sermon in the wake of the events that took place in Minneapolis this week. How am I supposed to preach on Jesus’ baptism when there are serious questions not just about what happened to Renee Nicole Good, but about how Immigration Customs Enforcement agents are conducting themselves in cities around our country? Am I supposed to say nothing because by Sunday morning we’re all exhausted from the emotions surrounding it all and we need a break? Or am I supposed to give voice to the lament and rage so many people have expressed this week? I mean, my star word last week was ‘express’, but still… 

And then I think about this story of Jesus’ baptism. Because it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Jesus doesn’t make an appointment with John to talk about getting baptized. There’s something about it that feels spontaneous. It certainly comes as a surprise to John, who has been baptizing people for a while down at the Jordan river. It’s clearly become a thing he’s known for. Jerusalem, Judea and all the region were going out to him. Without social media, or the internet, or broadcast media, or print media it takes awhile to build the kind of reputation that attracts that kind of attention. Then Jesus shows up. Jesus shows up and John is not having it. He is not having it because he’s just been talking about the one more powerful than him that is coming after. He’s already said that he’s not worthy to carry his sandals let alone baptize him. He’s talked about a winnowing fork in his hand, clearing the threshing floor, separating the wheat from the chaff and burning the chaff with unquenchable fire. Come to think of it, John sounds very certain about what he knows regarding Jesus.  

If you think about it, it makes sense. Ours is not the only time that has known turmoil. The land of Judah in the time of John and Jesus was a veritable tinder box. It was a land and a people occupied by a foreign power. But not just any foreign power, one that claimed to bring peace through its strength, through legions of soldiers who could make residents carry their armor for a mile at a time. Its strength took the form of crosses used to caution and intimidate the people into compliance. Obey, or die, they said. And so, of course John sees the Messianic promise as one that will fight this fire with literal fire, that will cleanse their land of this occupying force. It’s ironic really. Because when Jesus shows up and John tries to stop him, he says, “I need to be baptized by you.” Now think about it. The people who came out to John were called to repent. Another gospel calls it a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. Repentance isn’t about feeling bad. It isn’t even about being really sorry for what we’ve done. Repentance is a change of direction, a change of mind and spirit. A person who gets lost driving somewhere unfamiliar doesn’t need to apologize, they need to recognize that the road they’re on isn’t going to get them where they want to go and ask for directions. John thinks the one who is coming after him is more powerful, that he isn’t worthy to carry his sandals. “I need to be baptized by you,” he says. It’s a confession, really. Could it be that John was wrong about Jesus? It won’t be the last time he wonders that. But here is the first of many great reversals that Jesus will invite us to witness. Because the realm that Jesus invites us into, the realm Jesus wants us to see right in front of us, the realm of God’s power at work in the here and now looks nothing like the kind of power that gets exercised by the state, the kind of power that was being exercised by the Empire. To all of John’s objections, to all of his certainty, Jesus simply says, “let it be,” or “let it go.” Sometimes repentance means letting go of the stories we are so certain of in order to experience the fulfillment of what God would put right in this world. In that moment, it is John who is being invited to repent, to change his mind, and to live into a new story. It’s one in which God in Jesus enters into the messy reality of this world to be in it with us and for us. That, it turns out, really is more powerful. 

In a few minutes we will reaffirm our baptismal covenant during which you will be invited to remember your own baptism. You don’t have to remember the details of the day. Like me, you might only have a picture of yourself as a baby in a dress in some strange pastor’s arms. To remember our baptism is to remember the story to which we belong in a dangerous and unpredictable world where power can turn deadly in the blink of an eye. The story of our baptism is one in which we let go of every certainty the world and maybe even we ourselves have about who we’re supposed to be and what we have to do to gain acceptance, or love, or power, or belonging. Jesus has flipped the script. In our baptism we don’t behave in a certain way so that God will love us, or forgive us, we follow in the way of Jesus because in our baptism we are assured that God already loves us and does forgive us. In the waters of baptism we are claimed with Jesus as God’s own beloved. As those who belong to each other, because we belong to God. May it be so.