Sermon Tone Analysis

A Country Divided

Just a scant few days ago we as a country commemorated the one year anniversary of the traumatic events of January 6th, 2021 perhaps, like me, you remember watching a live-stream of the events that day as people poured into the capitol building.

I watched Fox News, CNN, ABC, BBC, NBC… I checked every source that I could… and it was everywhere.

The gaze of the world had turned toward the events that day as the brokenness that we as a country have been experiencing came to a head.

Whether your Democrat or Republican… Green Party or a follower of Quanon… the one thing that I believe is universally agreed upon is that there is indeed significant distrust and disfunction in our country.

The trouble is… we also, nearly universally, see the problem to be on the other side of the fence.

Why?

Because those on the other side are just too far from the truth.

At best they have been misled and lied to…

at worst they knowingly ignore the truth for the sake of their own agendas.

Jon Meacham

Author and Historian Jon Meacham spoke on the parallels in our country to the pre-civil war days of the 1850’s.

Meacham said, “The 1850’s did not end well.

It is a chilling parallel.

You had two competing visions of reality, you had two faiths, you had two interpretations of scripture, both religious and secular scripture: [referring to] the declaration of independence.

You had violence on the floor of the house.”

Two different faiths… Meacham says… two different interpretations of scripture.

In the years leading up to the Civil War, there was much fighting done not with muskets on a battlefield but with words from the pulpits of our nation.

Permit me to say it is a humbling and terrifying thing to recognize that some of the first fighting of the war was done from the pulpit.

We, the church, focused on justifying ourselves at the sake of condemning the other.

Certainly, this was not universally true… but the sermons that caught the attention of the nation were those that justified self and condemned the other.

Words Create Reality

There is a phrase that I picked up in my seminary days that I believe to be very true: Words create reality.

This is not some post-modern theoretical stuff… this comes to us from ancient Judaism… from the very beginning of Genesis chapter 1 3, “And God said…”Let there be light,” and there was light.

Photons flared into existence across the universe and the void was no longer in darkness.

God spoke reality into existence.

Words create reality.

Ancient Judaism taught of God’s divine power to speak something into being.

It also offers some rather humbling lessons to the power of the spoken word not only for God but for us as well.

One of my favorite scripture passages when talking about the power of words comes from 2 Kings chapter 2. Elijah has just been taken up to heaven in a flaming chariot, leaving his prodigy Elisha to figure out life as a prophet.

And one of the first encounters that Elisha has is a story of him on his way to the town of Bethel.

Suddenly, a group of kids start making fun of him and call him, ready for it… “Baldy head.”

In a moment of anger, Elisha turns on the children and speaks a word of curse against them in the Lord’s name… and his curse becomes reality.

A pair of she-bears come out of the woods and, according to 2 Kings, the bears maul 42 children.

End of story.

The first time I read that story, I remember my mouth dropping open and wondering why on earth that text was even in scripture.

But as I considered this new young prophet on the block still wrestling with the power of his words… I hear this story as the power of words to create reality.

While you and I may not be able to conjure up she-bears, our words can create some pretty significant pain.

We can create guilt, disappointment, frustration, even anger and hate with our words.

Words create reality and, make no mistake, we have two very different realities in our nation today.

Realities created by spoken words geared in different directions.

Now, we like to blame the existence of these two different realities on the media… but even as we point the finger at the other person causing us to sin we might remind ourselves of Adam pointing at Eve in the garden while saying to God, “the woman whom YOU created gave it to me.”

Adam blamed God for creating a woman who “caused” him to sin.

With Adam’s words in his efforts to justify himself, he created a greater divide with God than eating a piece of fruit ever could.

It was only after God’s conversation with Adam and Eve that they were thrown out of Eden.

Words are powerful.

Words can condemn.

Words can create division.

Words can create war.

Words can create death.

Words create reality.

I say all of this to underscore the depth and power of the spoken word.

We can see in our society today how words from human lips can create realities.

We live with two different sets of realities in our nation today… realities that only exist because someone said they did.

If you talk politics with someone for 2 minutes you can probably guess if they are more likely to watch Fox News or CNN.

We tend to claim the reality that we listen to.

And perhaps that in itself is a good lesson for us to consider.

If we claim the realities that we listen to… which ones are we choosing to hear?

And if our understanding of the world around us can be shaped by someone talking to us on TV… how might we listen and hear more intentionally a word spoken not by humans but by God?

When God speaks in scripture, we should listen.

When God speaks, we should look for God’s Word to make reality.

And in our Gospel lesson today, we get just that.

God speaks.

Let’s get these spoken words from God in our Lukan passage today into context.

As John the Baptist is out preaching and baptizing people in the wilderness, he has been speaking reality into existence for the people.

His words are reverberating in the people’s hearts with such vigor that the people began to ask if John is the promised messiah.

He’s telling the people that God is a Just God… God is going to come and punish the sinners and give life to the righteous.

And those who hear John’s words and step down into the waters count themselves among the righteous that God has come for.

God will destroy the wicked… God will destroy their enemies… and God will raise up the good folks.

God is on THEIR side.

It’s a theme that echoes from the Old Testament prophets who taught that God would protect Israel and destroy its enemies.

And it’s a message that resonates deeply with the Roman-conquered people of John’s age.

True enough, this idea of destroying our enemies tends to resonate well with people of any age when they believe that they are the ones whose cause is righteous.

It should not be lost on us that there have been many a war that had Christians on both sides who believed God would find their cause to be the righteous one.

As John hears these rumblings from the people wondering if HE might be that justice bringer from God that they are all hoping for, John points beyond himself.

God is sending someone else… but God issending one who will bring God’s justice to the world.

Amidst the proclamations and the baptisms… the moment we remember from Sunday school happens.

Jesus steps into the water, he’s baptized by John… and then the Holy Spirit descends upon him in a bodily form like a dove.

And Luke tells us that there is suddenly this voice from Heaven with the words, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”

The sentence is short and simple… it’s one that we could almost pass over without too much thought.

And yet the declaration that is made within it is profound.

Before we get the chance to see any of Jesus’ public ministry, before we get to make judgements for ourselves on his actions and his teachings… we have God’s stamp of quality assurance on this 30-something year old messiah.

This is a first-time one-time only-time thing here from God.

That stamp of God’s approval is a stamp spoken by God into existence so that the people of John’s time might know that Jesus was indeed the one sent by God… the messiah they had been waiting for.

Jesus was the guy who was going to give God’s justice to the world… finally.

He was in their midst and justice was about to happen.

I can imagine watching a Marvel Super Hero movie and you hear the change in the music.

The momentum is shifting from evil to good.

Jesus is about to pull out his adamantium cross and the God powers are about to blast some evil doers.

I mean, that’s the hope, right?

Jesus is going to come in and win the day for the righteous and blast our enemies... right?

I mean… that works well if we are indeed the righteous ones… and we are… aren’t we?

We are the righteous ones… right?

Not that other group of Christians?

In all of the Civil War sermons that I have read that garnered the attention of the nation… it didn’t matter whether they were North or South… the sermons offered evidence first of their own rightness of cause while rebuking those on the other side.

“We are making all people free… they are trying to enslave others.”

“We are only trying to defend ourselves and live in peace, they are attacking us.”

And they say together, “God is on OUR side.”

With the two starkly different realities within our nation, they pointed the finger at one another and said that God’s judgement was coming for the other one.

In times when we find ourselves standing in a different reality from our neighbor, we would do well to remember Good Friday.