Seeing Beyond 'Dissonance and Doubt'

[This message was shared yesterday morning during worship with the members and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Matthew 11:2-15

One of the stories my brothers-in-law like to tell is of the holiday years ago for which Ann decided to bake something special. 

She asked me to pick up the ingredients while I was at the grocery store for other items. I picked up everything that Ann needed, arrived home, and, as Ann did things in the kitchen, pulled them out. 

Imagine my surprise when Ann gasped as she pointed to the coconut I’d just bought. “You got a coconut?” “Yeah,” I told her, “It was on the list.” “No,” she said, “I’m baking. I needed coconut flakes. Not a whole coconut!” I’m sure that Ann had said “coconut flakes” when I jotted down “coconut.” But all I could see was the main staple of the diets of the castaways on Gilligan’s Island.

That little embarrassing incident illustrates dissonance, which the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines as the difference “between the truth and what people want to believe.” When I saw coconut flakes on my list, despite what Ann had told me I was looking for, I started looking for the fruit. I was in the dark, living in dissonance from the truth.

Our gospel lesson for this morning, Matthew 11:2-15, finds John the Baptizer living in dissonance from the truth. The man who had faithfully prepared the way for the Messiah to be revealed was now in prison. 

When John pictured the Messiah, the Christ, God’s anointed King, in his mind, he saw a king who would take an ax to the tree, that is the person, not bearing the fruits of repentance. He saw a king who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire and pull out his winnowing fork to separate the wheat and the weeds. He saw the Messiah taking control of God’s fallen creation, bringing judgment to those who walked away from God and new life who turned God the Father and to the Messiah. John was fed up with the sin of the human race and longed for the Messiah to make things right.

The picture in his mind that John saw of what the Messiah would bring about wasn’t wrong, any more than my picture of what a coconut looks like was wrong. 

The problem was that John wasn’t seeing the whole picture. What he saw was incomplete. He was forgetting what else the Old Testament prophets meant when, under the inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit, they spoke of the coming of the Messiah. 

For example, in our first lesson for today, the prophet Isaiah says of Messiah: “...the eyes of the blind [will] be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy.” (Isaiah 35:5-6) The King of kings would also, Isaiah and the other prophets tell us elsewhere, suffer, die, and rise before bringing judgment and before God’s new, eternal kingdom would fully come into being.

From his place of dissonance and uncertainty, John the Baptizer sends some of his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Matthew 11:3) 

Jesus tells John’s disciples to be witnesses of all that they hear and see for John: “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.” (Matthew 11:5). These are the things that the prophets said the Messiah would do. 

And then Jesus says, “Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.” (Matthew 11:6) John, Jesus is saying, don’t stumble in your faith. Don’t get tripped up by the incomplete picture you have of God in your mind when the whole picture is there to be seen, there to be believed for everlasting life. Don’t wallow in darkness when the Light of the world has come to be the Way, the truth, and the life.

What pictures of God do we keep tucked in our minds that keep us from fully living in the light of Who God really is?

Do we see God as an angry Judge, just waiting for us to stumble so that He can pounce on us and dispatch us to hell? 

God’s Word tells us that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” who trust their sins and themselves to Jesus. (Romans 8:1)

Do we see God as removed from our struggles and griefs? 

Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)

Do we see God as being tardy in bringing His kingdom fully into being with Jesus’ return? 

God’s Word says, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9) Jesus hasn’t yet returned to the earth do that all will have the time to turn to Him and to invite others to do the same.

Do we see the God we know in Jesus as belonging especially to our race, our country, our denomination, our family? 

Jesus says that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that whoever believes in Him--whoever turns from sin and trusts in Him as God and Messiah--will have everlasting life with God. (John 3:16)

Do we see the mess our world is in and wonder when and if Jesus is going to act? 

Jesus tells us in one place not to worry about the times or seasons and then says to we Christian disciples, “I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)

Of John, Jesus says in our gospel lesson, “among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist.” 

But then he says, “...yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” (Matthew 11:11) 

That’s you Jesus is talking about. 

You: the baptized believer in Jesus Christ. 

You: the One Who is being saved and daily transformed by the living Word, Jesus Himself. 

Unlike John when he sat in prison, you know that Jesus died on a cross for your sins. 

Unlike John, you know that Jesus rose to tear open eternity and a personal, eternal relationship with God for you and the whole Church. 

Unlike John, you received the Holy Spirit when you were baptized. 

Unlike John, as a believer, Jesus has taken up residence in your life to protect you from temptation and sin and to empower you to live in the peace of God that passes all human understanding. John could only look ahead in anticipation of what the Messiah would do. 

You and I live in the certainty of what He has already done and know that our lives, our futures, our eternity can rest in a no more certain place of love, life, and forgiveness than the hands of Jesus. 

You are greater than John because, as you receive God’s Word and the sacraments, God is tearing down what the poet and Anglican priest Malcolm Guite calls our “dissonance and doubt.” Jesus has already made you part of His kingdom! (The Six Days World Transposing in an Hour)

This Advent season, as we prepare for Christmas and for the day when Jesus will return to this world, once more listen closely to His Gospel Word, humbly receiving it each day and as we worship together where we hear, taste, and see it. Dissonance, darkness, and doubt will flee when you allow yourself to hear and see what Jesus has done at manger, cross, and tomb. You will see Him again for Who He is: the Messiah, our Savior, our King, our Lord, our God. 

And in the seeing, you will know to Whom you belong no matter what. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Turn and Live

[This message was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio during worship yesterday, the Second Sunday of Advent.]

Matthew 3:1-12
Once, in the days before cell phones, GPSes, or even Mapquest and Google Maps, I missed the biggest part of a farewell party--thrown for Ann and me--after driving past (and continuing to drive past) the house where it was happening. The party came at the end of my pastoral internship in Michigan.

Ann had gone separately because I needed to make a run to Traverse City before going to the farewell. By the time I finally made it, the whole thing was nearly over. All because I hadn’t asked for directions...and because once I was lost, I didn’t turn back when I should have. When we go wrong, the most sensible thing is to turn around. But I didn't do the sensible thing.

For a long time, as I was going wrong that day on the backroads of Benzie County, Michigan, I was too proud to turn back, too proud to admit that I was going wrong, too proud to find a payphone and call someone who could help me, too proud to confess that maybe Ann had been right about my need of her written directions offered earlier in the day.

Have you ever gone wrong in life, set out in the wrong direction and gotten lost? 

I’m not just talking about the places you drive but also being wrong about

• the things you’ve thought, 
• the decisions you’ve made, 
• the relationships you’ve harmed, 
• the untruths you’ve told, 
• the walls you’ve built between God and yourself? 

It’s so easy to lose our sense of direction and end up doing the wrong thing, the hurtful thing, the destructive thing, isn’t it? 

That’s because we’re born with our moral compasses that are askew. 

We actually like to sin. 

We like to play God and travel the lost roads that go away from God. 

We’re so messed up that we sin even when we don’t want to. The apostle Paul talks about this in Romans 7: "I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing." (Romans 7:19)

Like King David, we can confess, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” (Psalm 51:5)

In today’s gospel lesson, on this Second Sunday of Advent, we meet John the Baptizer, we meet John the Baptizer, whose message is as much for us today--when we look either to the return of Jesus to this world or the day when, just beyond our deaths, we meet Jesus face to face--as it was when John spoke them to prepare His fellow Jews to meet Jesus in the flesh for the first time. 

Take a look at what John says near the beginning of the lesson, Matthew 3:1-12: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (v.2) 

“Turn around,” John is saying. “You’re going in the wrong direction. Turn back toward the promised Savior and King because He’s bringing His Kingdom soon and you want to be ready!” 

Are you ready to meet Jesus? 

He died on a cross and rose from His tomb and is now ascended into heaven. He is Lord of heaven and earth. So, you will meet Him someday. Are you ready for that?

We may say, “Sure, I’m ready. I try to do the right thing.” God’s Word says, “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.” (Isaiah 64:6) 

We may say, “I’m better than most people,” hoping that Jesus will judge us on a curve. But God’s Word says, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) 

We may say, “God is gracious and loving. I don’t have anything to fear.” But in God’s Word, Jesus, God in the flesh, says, “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.” (Matthew 10:32-33) 

We may say, “I’m a member of Living Water Lutheran Church.” But Jesus says that He will let the wheat and the weeds live side-by-side in His Church until the day of His return. If mere membership in the club were all that it took to be part of God’s Kingdom, John the Baptizer wouldn’t have told his fellow Jews, the Sadducees and Pharisees, “I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham” (Matthew 3:9). There’s nothing that we can do to make ourselves ready to meet Jesus.

But there is good news! Even within the harsh words of John the Baptist in our lesson today. 

After warning that the coming Messiah Jesus had ax in hand to take down all those whose lives don’t bear the fruit of repentance--the fruit of habitual turning back to God--John says (starting at verse 11): “I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

Did you hear the good news--the gospel--there? 

John is saying, “Look, my baptism here on the Jordan River is nothing but you saying that you’re turning to God.” 

That’s great, of course. But if our being right with God depends on our good intentions, we still end up a long way from God. 

• I intend to work out every day but don’t always. 
• I intend to get enough sleep at night but often don’t. 
• I intend to write the great American novel but I haven’t yet. 

John’s baptism of repentance was meant to prepare his fellow Jews for Jesus’ Baptism--God’s Baptism--that brings us forgiveness and new life with God. 

It’s this Baptism, Jesus’ Baptism, that changes us, that brings God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit into our lives, that daily goes to work to kill off our old sinful selves, and that calls the ever-new, ever-righteous child of God to repent--to turn back--to Jesus. 

It’s this Baptism that helps us to hear God’s call to us to turn to Jesus whenever we get lost and to trust that He has done everything (and is still doing everything) needed to make us right with God--to make us righteous, to trust that He will lead us in the right direction.

John’s imagery is interesting. He says that Jesus will institute a Baptism in “the Holy Spirit and fire.” Later, he says that those who turn from God will burn in “unquenchable fire.” 

Fire is judgment. 

The Holy Spirit is the One Who brings life into being. 

Holy Baptism as instituted by Jesus first brings judgment on we who are born in sin, then gives new life from the Holy Spirit. 

Our call from the moment we’re baptized is to keep turning to Christ, whatever our circumstances, even when we’re lost or afraid or conscious of our sin or overwhelmed. 

We who have been baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire know that as we turn to Christ, our old selves are being drowned or burned away to make way for the new person God is retrofitting us to be, today and for all eternity. 

In Jesus’ Baptism, we die with Jesus and we are raised to be with Him. Saint Paul puts it like this: “We were therefore buried with [Jesus] through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” (Romans 6:4)

You and I have a penchant for going in the wrong direction. But the life-giving Word of God, the gospel of Jesus, has entered into our lives in Holy Baptism and comes to us again and again in the Word proclaimed and read and heard, and in the body and blood of Jesus given in Holy Communion to turn us back to Him and to the life that only He can give. 

If you remember nothing else from this message, remember this: Turn to Him as He calls you and live in His Kingdom, today and eternally. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Jesus is Coming Back: Who's Ready?

[This message was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, yesterday.]

Matthew 24:36-44

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. The word advent, you’ll recall, means arrival or the coming of a person or event. In Advent, we wait for the coming of Christmas, of course. More importantly, we await the day when the crucified and risen Jesus, the One Whose birth we celebrate in just a few weeks, will return to this world.

In the Nicene Creed, we confess our belief that Jesus “will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” 

But in the rush of everyday life, we often seem to lose touch with the fact that Jesus, Who has made good on every single promise He’s ever made, will return to this world. 

When He does return, the judgment will happen. Those who have trusted in Christ, surrendering their lives and their wills in the everyday places of life, will live with God for eternity. Those who have not trusted in Christ--who have trusted in themselves, their wits, their money, their families, a false religion, whatever--will be separated from God and from life for eternity. Jesus says, referring to Himself: “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” [John 3:18]

It’s to keep the certain promise of His return--and the need to remain constantly focused on following Him--in the forefront of our minds that Jesus speaks the words that make up today’s Gospel lesson. Let’s take a look at what Jesus says in Matthew 24:36-44.

Verse 36: “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

This may be hard for us to imagine! The main characteristic of any human being is the desire to be in control. Yet, here’s Jesus, God in the flesh, saying that even He doesn’t know the day or hour of His return to this world. He’s leaving things totally to the will of the Father, just as He did when He went to the garden of Gethsemane and prayed: “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” [Matthew 26:39] 

Anyone who claims to know when Jesus will return, as TV preachers often do, is placing themselves above Jesus. Speculation about when Jesus will return is nothing other than a human attempt to take control of what rightly belongs in the hands of God alone.

Verse 37: “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming [or the advent] of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken [to be judged] and the other left [to live]. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken [to be judged] and the other left [to live].”

Jesus asks us here to remember what things were like back in the days before Noah’s flood. There were two ways to look at those days. 

Genesis 6:11-13 tells us how the world looked from God’s perspective: “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, ‘I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.’” From God’s point of view, the people of the world were corrupted by sin and violent in all of their dealings. Evil was so bad that God decided to send the flood and destroy every human being who didn’t worship him. 

But, Jesus says, in the days and years leading up to the flood, all but eight members of the human race looked at things in a different light. They went about their business without giving a thought to the corruption, injustice, megalomania, and violence that characterized them and their culture. Pre-flood humanity never knew what hit them or why when the waters rose. The flood came, Jesus says, and took them away. 

The world today is just as corrupt, violent, and selfish as it was in the days before the flood. If the Father were to tell the Son that right now was the moment for Him to return, it wouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who knows and follows Jesus!

Go back to our lesson, please. Verse 42: [Jesus continues] “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.”

We had our house broken into once. It took us by surprise. The thieves didn’t text us to say, “We’re breaking into your house next week.” 

Just so, Jesus doesn’t tell us when He’s coming back, just that He is and that we need to be ready for it. 

And exactly why doesn’t Jesus tell us the time of His arrival? That way we could keep on sinning and doing whatever we want and then, just before He comes back or just before we die (assuming He’ll tell us that date too), we could repent. 

People who think this way--and many people do think this way--are under the delusion that salvation is a deal we make with God by saying the right words or doing the right things. Or they think that they'll know the exact moment at which they'll need to be ready, as though God is going to inform them of when Christ is returning or when we're going to die. 

But we can’t negotiate with God. 

We can’t placate Gods with religious acts. 

We can't anticipate the moment when the omnipotent Creator and King of the universe is going to draw the curtain on this old creation and usher in the new one with the return of Jesus.

This very day, God demands that we either adhere to His commandments perfectly, which we cannot do, or that we daily repent and believe Jesus Christ, Who has obeyed God’s Law perfectly, then taken the punishment we deserve for us. 

It’s people who daily turn to Christ, trusting that He has made us part of His kingdom by grace through faith in Him who are ready not only for Christ’s return but also for whatever life may bring us at any moment.

No matter what our age or education or wisdom or income level, we cannot know the day or hour at which either our own lives or the life of this world will come to an end. We are NOT in control! Please repeat that loudly with me now: WE ARE NOT IN CONTROL! (And that's a good thing!)

Life on this fallen planet is fragile. But Jesus died and rose so that death in this world need not be the ends of our lives.

In John 11:25-26, Jesus promises: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die…” This is a promise not just that Jesus’ disciples will live with God beyond death. It’s also a promise that God will fill us with life, a life of love and direction, hope and peace, even in the midst of the chaos, pain, grief, and uncertainty of this life.

Advent is the season of waiting for our King to come back. But we don’t wait passively. We await Christ with faith that He’s in control even when our world is unraveling. 

And from the certainty of faith, we watch for ways we can love God and love neighbor, fight for justice, feed the hungry, care for the impoverished, make disciples, take care of our families, love our friends, seek reconciliation with those we have hurt.

We don’t do any of this to earn God’s attention or affection. God already thinks about you all the time. He already loves you and has done everything needed to save you from sin, death, and the devil. He did that when Jesus died and rose for you. And you received a portion in Jesus’ resurrection when you were baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, when the Word of God came to you and you could say, “I believe in Jesus Christ.” It is only faith like this that prepares us for Christ’s return.

Jesus is coming back! We don’t know when, but when He does, may He find us ready, trusting in Him, our lives focused on Him, brimming over with gratitude for grace, filled with faith, and powered by the Holy Spirit to live the lives of love and purpose for which we were made. 

That’s how to be ready for Jesus’ advent!

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]