God is not Playing With You
Notes
Transcript
Lord God, bless Your Word wherever it is proclaimed. Make it a Word of power and peace to convert those not yet Your own and to confirm those who have come to saving faith. May Your Word pass from the ear to the heart, from the heart to the lip, and from the lip to the life that, as You have promised, Your Word may achieve the purpose for which You send it, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 2 As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, 3 the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’ ”
Last year, I began each sermon with a humorous or illustrative story, something to ease us into the sermon. While I do like a good story, this year is different as we begin to transition from having just a typical pastor/congregation relationship.
For many of you, the transition that took place on Epiphany Sunday, January 7 of 2017 was celebrated as the time when St. John’s left the ranks of those churches that had no shepherd, a church that was incomplete and in the eyes of some, headed for destruction. Few of you grasped what had taken place when the Synod deployed a missionary to Gary.
For three years, we have operated here at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church like your typical small Lutheran parish, except for those times when the Synod sent its little reminders that it was involved in the life of St. John’s and, by extension, in Gary, Indiana in a unique way.
The Lord, through such books as Joining Jesus on His Mission: how to be an everyday missionary by Rev. Greg Finke, and Who Stole My Church by Rev. Gordon MacDonald, showed me that we needed to embrace our calling, a Community on a Mission to reflect the pure Gospel in what we say and do. We are not just another Gary cultural and social institution. We are the front-line of God’s Mission to deliver Gary’s residents from the power and penalty of sin. We are planted to proclaim in Gary, IN that the Lord has visited His people, that it is time to wake up from the slumber of contentment with fleshly, ear-tickling, church playing. Let others, both left and right, play politics, we proclaim the Kingdom!
This pandemic has affected all of us, whether physically, emotionally, socially, or economically. We cannot pretend otherwise when some of us are even unable to be physically present for worship and to receive God’s gifts of Word and Sacrament. Not everyone will survive this, but repeat this after me:
Unless God says so, it isn’t time to go!
It is time for the Gary Lutheran Community, St. John’s Evangelical, Good Shepherd, and Ascension Lutheran Christian School, to reflect the reality of God’s Mission. This will take us into unfamiliar territory, it will stretch us spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and maybe even physically. We aren’t being tasked with anything that God is not committed to supplying the resources to empower and equip us to accomplish.
4 John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
The people weren’t coming out to be entertained. They were coming out to be cleansed. John’s message, not his amenities, drew them out of their comfortable routines, so that they could prepare to receive the work of the Lord.
6 Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey.
John was not offering them platitudes for profitability. He wasn’t telling them how to become a Social Influencer or how to level-up. He was telling Judea and Jerusalem that they were not ready for what God was about to do, and they needed to get ready. “Repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins” was a message that challenged their spiritual superiority.
Having a liturgy and a lectionary doesn’t make this congregation superior to those congregations that don’t, if it doesn’t make you aware that you are a steward of the mysteries of God. If you don’t hear God speaking to you and you speaking to God, the liturgy is just dead letters to you, dead letters that will condemn you for taking the Lord’s name in vain.
7 And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. 8 I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
John’s preaching prepared the people for a transformation. He preached repentance to prepare them for what God was ready to do.
1 Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. 2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
No one can say that things have gone well for this community. We have lost nearly an entire generation that has decided that God had walked away from Gary, even though the city is filled with places where Jesus’ name was dropped every Sunday and Wednesday night. It was as if God was willing to let Gary stand as a testimony against Him. And some began to interpret our situation in just that way.
Say it with me: It isn’t like that!
Sometimes we need to be reminded of what God’s purpose is. Sometimes we need to see that there is a difference between temporal and eternal, that the Kingdom of God is not just a bigger version of the kingdoms of this world, that God is not just a man who operates on a larger scale. No, the Lord means it when He says, “My ways are not your ways, nor are My thoughts your thoughts.” We ask “Why has God allowed these things that we have suffered?” We don’t ask, “Why has God refused to allow us to fade away?”
3 A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4 Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. 5 And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
The things that seemed to be so low that they could never rise up, the things that seemed to be so high that they were untouchable, the crookedness that was so ingrained and intractable that we would just have to live with it, God is sending His Word to heal, and watching over His Word to perform it. Church is not just something that you do as you mark time on your way to the grave. It is the gathering together of God’s chosen people, united in Christ’s death and empowered to live in the light of his resurrection by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. The Church is called to proclaim that Jesus is real, that He is really present, and that they can know that they are His because He is faithful to do what He has declared.
1 Lord, you were favorable to your land; you restored the fortunes of Jacob. 2 You forgave the iniquity of your people; you covered all their sin. Selah
It isn’t just a feeling, it isn’t just mantra. God commanded His people to “Taste and see that the Lord is good” in Psalm 34:8. For too many people, this is just a show, just something that they do to keep up appearances, but what does the Scripture say?
16 The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?
“This is” is not “this represents”
This is! This is!
God works through means, not through magic. God doesn’t play games with us. We are called to share His means of grace at the altar because “He knows our frame; He knows that we are dust.”
6 A voice says, “Cry!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. 7 The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it; surely the people are grass. 8 The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.
We will forget what we said last week because of the pressures of last night. God reminds us regularly of his commitment to our sanctification, purchased with His own blood, while others talk like it’s all up to us to keep ourselves from falling, as if we could keep ourselves from falling.
So we lie to ourselves, we lie to each other, and we lie to the world. And the world believed us so well that it now says that it no more needs Jesus to keep them than those groups who deny Christ’s gifts do. They can just throw His name around like those groups do, under the guise of transformational politics and wokeness instead of fleshly piety. Through the worship of technology, the world claims to do what He did just like many who honor Christ with their lips do, even as they reject His gifts, distort His Gospel, and make Him a liar by saying that He DOESN’T so love the World that whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but only the few who hit the Once Saved Always Saved Lottery, or those who make sin a racial issue, a gender issue, or a financial issue, instead of what it really is - rejection of God’s Law and rebellion against His authority.
And dogmatic zealotry won’t absolve you of your hard-hearted rebellion against God, your denial of His righteous judgments, and your dismissal of His pure Gospel and the obedience that is supposed to flow from its life-giving stream. A church that Confesses the Gospel, but buries that Good News within its walls, is just like the steward who buried the talent that he received from the Master. The liturgy won’t save you if it is just dead letters to you.
8 Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints; but let them not turn back to folly. 9 Surely his salvation is near to those who fear him, that glory may dwell in our land.
The Lord not only desires to dwell in our midst, He does so. He comes to us - real presence - real forgiveness - real deliverance! Just as He truly came, He truly died. Just as He truly died, He truly rose. and just as Jesus truly rose, He will truly return. This is what we celebrate in Holy Communion, as it it written:
26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
Others might sing about it, but I declare it, as I lift up the bread and the cup, that “The presence of the Lord is here. When I declare, as a called and ordained servant of the Word, that “in the stead of and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all of your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” - those same words that were spoken over you when the Lord baptized you, I am saying, “the presence of the Lord is here.”
God didn’t change - we did. Jesus didn’t stop being faithful, we did! God didn’t forget His exceeding great and precious promises, we did.
8 But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
Today, return to the Lord, remember His promises, receive His forgiveness, and walk in His presence. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom He has redeemed from the hand of our enemies.
And let the peace of God, that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds, through Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.