Sermon for the Baptism of Our Lord

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on January 12, 2014
Scripture text: Acts 10:34-43 (More accurately the whole chapter of  Acts 10)

It’s funny how we form our impression of other people. Who are they? What do they do? There’s a reason people say that first impressions are the most important, because we humans do tend to “lock in” the way we look at someone based entirely on the way we first encountered them. They become frozen, unchangeable; They are only who we thought them to be at the onset.

I’ll use a few Hollywood celebrities as an example of this. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who had been channel surfing and had stumbled onto the 1950’s sci-fi classic “Forbidden Planet.” Truly, a monumental film, incredibly influential, but what my friend couldn’t get past was its star. It was Leslie Nielsen, better known to most of us for slapstick comedy and spoof. Naked Gun. Airplane. Dracula: Dead and Loving It. These are the movies he’s best known for, but to see this actor in his early career as a heroic leading man instead of a buffoon was almost too much for my friend.

We all, whether we care about it or not, have heard about the controversy surrounding Mylie Cyrus. A controversy that is almost entirely based on this tendency of us to look at people as only who they are when we first encounter them. Our children first came to know her as a child TV star and pop star. Innocent, safe. But now she’s an adult and doing adult things and people are freaking out about it. Did we honestly think Ms. Cyrus or anyone else would stay frozen in time, a child forever?

We do this all over the place. We do it with celebrities as I’ve noted. We do with the people we know. I still struggle to some degree with the transformation of my libertine best friend in college into upright ultra-conservative family man. We do it with the figures of history. Thomas Jefferson is our third president, a founding father, a brilliant academic, a hero by all accounts, but the truth of his slave-ownership and his defense thereof is something we struggle with.

The characters and great people of the Biblical story are no different. We too lock them in as we first encountered them. They are all “good people,” righteous and holy. Decent and without flaw or vice. Well, like so many of these others, if that’s what we believe, we have them wrong.

It is not an easy thing for us to see someone like St. Peter as a bigot, but that was indeed what he was. It’s hard to blame him for it. Like most haters, he’s been taught from a very early age that “his people” and only “his people” are special. In his case, he was taught that only his people were the Chosen, blessed by God and only they were worthy enough to receive that blessing. He’s far from alone in that. The early history of the church bears that out.

On the mountaintop, Jesus declares that the disciples are to “go forth into all the nations.” And they seem to get a good start on Pentecost, when all the people from Parthia, Medea, Elam, and all those other tongue-twister nations our poor lectors have to read on that day come to believe. But Luke makes a point that all those people who showed up on that first Pentecost were only foreign in the sense of where they lived. All of them were the same ethnicity as Peter and the other disciples. It would be like one of us going to Tokyo and only hanging out with the American ex-pats who live there, never once talking to someone who was actually Japanese.

That was not quite what Jesus had in mind.

So Jesus has to get his apostles over themselves, in a sense, and actually get them out into the world amidst all those people they’ve thus far refused to talk to. You know them: Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Germans, Indians, Chinese, and so forth. All the peoples we call by the blanket term Gentiles.

Luke records two stories about how Jesus goes about doing this through visions and his Spirit. The first is in Acts chapter 8 when Philip encounters the eunuch of Ethiopia. The second is two chapters later when Peter is told to go visit the household of the Roman centurion Cornelius, the tail end of which is our second lesson today.

We typically look at these stories as tales of conversion: pagans becoming Christian, but I think there’s another way to look at it. Those pagans aren’t really pagan; the Scriptures record that they were already believers in God. And I think they are there not to be converted, but instead to convert those apostles into a new way of thinking and seeing the world.

Peter witnesses something remarkable, something he never believed possible. God’s Holy Spirit amidst people who were not chosen. God at work in Gentiles! And if God could do this and was doing this, what couldn’t he do and wouldn’t do?

Peter realizes that he was wrong. He was wrong about God and he was wrong about people. His first impression of the Gentiles did not hold up. He never thought this was possible. God blessing THEM! That’s why he speaks with such astonishment in the lesson that we have before us. God and his blessings are bigger than he ever realized.

Each of us carries within us our own prejudices, our own frozen first impressions about people and groups of people. We may be suspicious of those who espouse a particular political ideology or are of a certain economic status or whose skin color or sexual orientation is different from our own. Through the stories of Scripture, God continues to challenge each of us to see in the other God’s image and blessing just he did with Peter. But there’s another lesson we can take away from these stories beyond “don’t be a hater.”

You see, it’s not just others we are prejudiced towards. Not just others that we lock in, frozen and unchanging in our first impressions. We do it to ourselves. At various points, the voices of our mind have told us that we are worthless, idiotic, a failure, no good. And we’ve believed it. In the deepest recesses of our minds, in our heart of hearts, our view of ourselves is often far more negative and hateful than anything we project onto others.

But when Christ says that his Gospel, his salvation, his love is for all nations, all peoples, he means it. He means it for the alien and the strange, but perhaps most radically of all, he means it for you. If he can love them, he can love you. If he has died for them and rose again on the third day, he did it also for you.

Peter was challenged to see that God’s love and blessing are far bigger and more welcoming that he ever imagined. We join him in receiving that challenge and hopefully recognizing God’s wondrous image not just in those around us, but in ourselves as well. For all our flaws, vices, and yes, our prejudices, God loves us enough to die for us. If God’s love is big enough to include everybody, it’s big enough to include you. Amen.

Sermon for the Festival of Epiphany

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran on January 5, 2014
Scripture text: Matthew 2:1-12, 1 Corinthians 12:4-11

Did everyone get what they wanted for Christmas?

What? We’re still talking about Christmas. Well, yes. This is the Church, where Christmas lasts 12 days from Dec 25 until the Feast of Epiphany on Jan 6. Today is Jan 5 so we are still in the season of Christmas and still talking about Christmas.

Now, when I say “did everyone get what they wanted for Christmas,” don’t necessarily mean just material goods. Perhaps what you wanted was to see the look on a grandchild’s face when they opened their gift. Perhaps what you wanted was to share a meal that you had prepared with those that you love. Gifts take many forms, not all of them tangible.

Of course, the tradition of gift giving on Christmas comes out of the story in Matthew’s Gospel of the coming of the Magi to Jesus. These foreign dignitaries, magicians and astrologers really, who have traveled from far away lands because they saw in the same night sky they looked to for their secret knowledge a sign of the birth of a special child.

So they come, traveling unknown leagues from their home countries to Bethlehem, bearing gifts for the Christ child. Gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

We have heard this story so often and we are immersed in our modern world that we do not automatically recognize the oddity of these three gifts being given to the same child. But whatever sign these astrologers saw in the night sky revealed to them that this child would be the one to be given these three very specific things.

• Gold - The proper tribute due to any royal figure. A gift of gold is a gift meant for a king.
• Frankincense - The fine mix of herbs that when burned would give off fragrant smoke in the temple of the Lord. A gift meant for those at prayer. A gift for the high priest.
• Myrrh - Oil intermixed with spice and herb designed to embalm and preserve the body of one who had died. This gift is usually only given to the dead, and here it is given to one whose whole purpose in life is to die.

King, priest, and sacrifice. These three gifts are given with purpose, with design, with intent. These magi know not only who this infant is, but what he will do in his life. They are perhaps the very first of Jesus’ followers to foresee his Passion and death on a cross.

Gifts given with purpose. The truth is, every gift is given with purpose. Every gift is given for a reason. That reason may be something as simple as “I love you and I want to show you that” or “I appreciate what you do and I want to show my gratitude.” These are perfectly legitimate and genuine purposes behind the gifts that we give to one another and are often the source of why we give during the holiday season.

So perhaps a better question for today is not “did you get what you wanted on Christmas,” but rather “why did you give what you gave?” Or perhaps better still is “why were given what you received?” There is great merit in the pursuit of the answers to those questions. Not only is it healthy for us to recognize how much others love and appreciate us, but it may also be helpful for us to recognize what they see in us as a person. For some gifts are given not out of appreciation or affection, but as encouragement.

A child may be given a guitar as encouragement to develop their musical talents. Someone may be given tools to encourage their woodworking skills. A donation may be given in someone’s name to a charity to encourage them to keep up the fight for what is right.

When God gives a gift, this one of the purposes behind it. It may not be the only purpose, but it is one of them. If God gives a person musical gifts, they are being encouraged to develop and share them. If God gives a person an artistic eye, they are encouraged to develop and share the beauty that they see. Now we typically think of God-given gifts in this way, as something creative, but it is not always so.

For instance, one who is greatly skilled at the repair of mechanical devices is encouraged to pursue that for the sake of others. One who has great knowledge is encouraged to teach and spread that knowledge to others. One who has the wisdom of experience and a long life is encouraged to share what they know. One who has great wealth is asked to make use of it to help other people. In each of us, God has given something, a skill, a inborn talent, a unique perspective, something that he intends for us to share with others for betterment of the world.

St. Paul writes at some length about this in his first letter to the church in Corinth. He writes “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit...To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.”

Now the spirit that Paul speaks of is, of course, the Spirit of God, choosing with deliberate intent what each person is capable of. But the important piece is that phrase “for the common good.” What is given is given for others, for their sake. What we have is given to be shared to build up, to encourage, to grow, to challenge those around us.

Christ himself is that sort of gift. He too is given for a variety of purposes, but all of them intentional, all of them a reason. He comes to challenge us. Love your enemies. Pray for those who attack and persecute you. Hardly a easy thing he asks of us. Welcome the stranger. Embrace those that society deems unworthy. Again, a difficult thing for us, to welcome and love those alien and different from us.

He comes to encourage. Be better than you are now. Grow in faith and love towards yourself and others. Give generously of what you have, whether that be wealth, knowledge, affection, or inborn talents.

And he comes to die. For there is no greater good for humanity and for all of creation than the eradication of sin and death. These he does by taking them into himself and then sacrificing himself on a cross, putting them to death within himself. This is his greatest gift to us: life instead of death. Mercy instead of punishment.

These are given to you and so much more. Your skills, your wealth, your knowledge, your experiences, your salvation, all gifts from on high. All given with reason and intent. The question before each of us is “what does God want us to do with them?” Amen.