Community
Church Sermons
The First Sunday after
Epiphany – January 11, 2004
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
People sometimes ask me what Christians believe. I tell them we believe that Jesus Christ is Lord – the Messiah. Now, sometimes that’s not enough for people in our day who seem to want to make life and faith far more complicated and confusing than they need to be. But that was plenty for the first Christians. It is the central doctrine of the Christian Faith – the only confession required to be Baptized.
Jesus is the long-awaited, long-sought after, long-prophesied about Messiah.
Today I want to begin a small series of sermons around this confession, and I want to build it on a statement that will help us understand what it means for Jesus to be our Messiah today. The statement is simply this: “If Jesus is the Messiah, then…”
Today, I want to preach about one of the most important ramifications for us if, in fact, Jesus is the Messiah. And we’ll add a few more in the next several weeks. But first, today, I want to tell you about two amazing events.
Last Sunday saw the convergence of these two amazing events.
The first was the successful landing on the planet Mars of a small, eight-foot by five-foot space capsule containing a funny-looking probe called Spirit. The whole package had been launched from Cape Canaveral last June the 10th, aboard a Delta II rocket. I can’t even begin to imagine the precise calculations required to shoot something from the Earth to Mars and actually hit it! Mars, at the time of launch, was 64 million miles away from earth. By the time of the landing, the two planets were separated by 106 million miles. And last Sunday morning, just after midnight, the spacecraft descended toward the red planet, using rockets, parachutes, and inflated air bags to slow it down from 12,000 miles an hour to a dead stop on the surface of Mars in just 6 minutes time.
And if you’ve been following the story, you know that Spirit landed exactly as planned, in almost the exact location NASA engineers had aimed for! At 12:35 AM eastern time last Sunday, the mission team at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California received the first signal from Mars. The Spirit had safely landed! I think you’ll agree with me that it was and is a remarkable human achievement!
Then, just about 10 hours after
that great moment last Sunday, another amazing human event took place, It
happened right here in our own church during the 10:30 service. It was Steve
Nash’s last service with us, and maybe we were all on edge. I don’t know
exactly what it was, but that was the most discombobulated worship service I’ve
ever taken part in! I mean, it was a disaster! We left out things that should
have been put in, and we put in things that should have been left out! And I
guess I was the chief sinner in the midst of all the discombobulation because
every time I got up to pray, I had some need to add the Lord’s Prayer to the
end of it. So I did. Several times. And the congregation just followed along
like a bunch of lost sheep! “Our Father who art in heaven…”
Afterwards, one of our church members was teasing me about my part in all this confusion, and at the end of the conversation – trying to make me feel better, I think – she said, “Well, I guess that proves you’re only human!”
So do you get the picture I’m trying to paint about the two amazing things that happened last Sunday?
We human beings successfully orchestrated the precise landing of a space ship on a moving, spinning target 106 million miles away! And meanwhile, we human beings couldn’t walk a mere forty feet down a church aisle without tripping over our own feet and forgetting how many times to say the Lord’s Prayer!
That’s pretty amazing, don’t you think?
We are capable of such greatness! And yet susceptible to such weakness! One minute, we are Einstein. The next minute, we are the Three Stooges all rolled into one.
And that’s not all – we humans are capable of doing so much good, and yet also causing so much harm – of bringing beauty to the world, and yet also creating ugliness – of being very loving, and yet also very selfish – of bringing great joy, and yet also inflicting great pain.
What is it about us that makes us so capable of greatness on the one hand, and of disaster on the other? I think most of us wish we could find a way to be better than that! A friend of mine once put it this way, “My life would be so much better if I wasn’t so damn HUMAN!”
And maybe you think that’s the problem, too. That you’re just too darn human!
But that’s not it at all!
You see, one of the most remarkable claims of the Christian Faith is that the problem with the world is not that we are too human, but that we are not human ENOUGH!
In fact, in our Faith, there’s
nothing higher or better for people than being human!
Look at Christmas. It’s the story of God coming among us. And did you notice? Of all the ways that God could have entered the world – as a talking tree, or a holy book that someone discovers on a mountaintop, or as an angel that speaks to someone, or as a ghost that appears to someone – of all the ways God could have entered our world, God chose to come as a human being. And not just for a brief matinee performance, but for the full run of the show. He came into our world the way we come into the world – he was born a baby. He grew up like we do – as a kid susceptible to all the pressures of family, friends and the world around. He learned to work with wood, and to spit, and to whistle just like we do. He struggled with temptation, and followed his heart to a vocation, and made friends, and enemies, just like we do. He laughed, and he cried, he experienced fear and hope, he even ate food, and went to the bathroom, and sometimes got irritated with the people around him. And, of course, he died. No human being has ever escaped dying. Not even Jesus.
And yet, this is how the Messiah
came to us. As a human being!
Why do you suppose God would do something as stupid and as demeaning as that?
Unless, of course, being human isn’t stupid or demeaning at all! Maybe being truly human is what God intends us to be!
Let’s come back now to the central affirmation of the Christian Faith. Jesus is Lord. Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah who will save us from our sins.
And maybe – just maybe - if Jesus really is the Messiah - then one of the sins Jesus really needs to save us from is the sin of not being human enough!
Let me turn this around and put it another way: the offer that comes to you and me through Jesus Christ is the opportunity to become a truly human person! The way of our faith is the way of becoming more human than we’ve ever been before! And we can see that in today’s text from Luke.
The fully-human Messiah, Jesus, comes to be Baptized. As he prays, the heavens open, and the Holy Spirit descends upon him in the form of a dove. Then a voice from heaven speaks. “You are my beloved child!”
Sandy and I spent a wonderful week following Christmas at our son’s home in Massachusetts. Our 20-month old grandson Ryan was there. And I think Sandy and I probably felt about Ryan a little bit like God felt on the day Jesus was Baptized.
Oh, Ryan, you are so beloved!
I like that word “beloved”. It seems like a combination of the two words “beautiful” and “loved.”
And Ryan is certainly that. Ryan
is beautiful, and Ryan is loved.
And so are you!
When God spoke those words to Jesus, he spoke them to every human being who’s ever lived. In the Messiah becoming human, God revealed the thoughts of His heart for all people!
You are beautiful! And you are
loved!
And yet, all that belovedness is wrapped up in a very human package!
You know, one of Ryan’s Christmas gifts was a rhythm band set. It was all contained within a big plastic bass drum with a removable top. Inside were all sorts of rhythm instruments – castanets, a tambourine, maracas, a kazoo, a little plastic flute – all kinds of stuff! Well, one morning, Ryan emptied this drum of all its contents. He picked up the drum sticks and banged the drum.
A smile came across his face!
Well, Sandy and I happened to be in the room with him so we picked some rhythm instruments of our own and started to shake them. Then Ryan’s dad came and got the kazoo. And his mother came and picked up the tambourine. And for some strange reason – I think it must have been a movement of the Holy Spirit – someone began singing La Cucaracha!
La cucaracha, la cucharacha…da-da-da-da-da-da-da…! We didn’t know any of the other words, but who cares?
Well, Ryan exploded with joy and started banging that drum with great excitement! Then he got up, and we followed him around the house, marching together, playing our instruments…singing La Cucaracha, la cucaracha…da-da-da-da-da-da-da! It was better than the Eastern Himalayan Community College Almost-Precision, Somewhat Synchronized Marching Tambourine Band!
And what a time we had! That little boy has some salsa in him! People, driving by on the street outside stopped their cars and asked, “What the heck is going on in there?”
Now, the music wasn’t perfect. The rhythm wasn’t always rhythmic. And yet, there was something truly beautiful in that experience.
You see, the magic was not that
it was a perfect performance. The magic – and the joy – was in the simple
experience of learning how to play!
And that brings us to the first point. If Jesus really is the Messiah, then its okay for you to be human and to be in the process of learning the tune of life!
It seems to me that the trouble with religion is that it’s not comfortable with people learning to play La Cucaracha. Religion so often judges people for not being able to perfectly perform the song yet. Any flaw of doctrine or thought, any misbehavior or sinful action is grounds for excluding people, demeaning people, rejecting people, and sometimes even treating them like dirt.
But in Jesus, God shows us another way to see human beings – as beloved people who are just now learning to play the song of life! And even with all our miscues, squeaks and out-of-tune melodies, God smiles and joins us as we march and sing, La cucaracha, la cucaracha…!
So if Jesus really is the Messiah, you don’t have to be afraid of being human anymore!
My dear friend Richard came into my life early in my
ministry. He was a rough and tumble sort of guy, not a very good husband or
father, all caught up in himself and his life as a part of the organized crime
scene in Providence, Rhode Island. When his wife insisted he come to church
with her, I began to get anonymous phone calls from people warning me about the
fact that a member of the mob was attending our services. What better place for
a member of the mob to be?
Richard sort of hung out on the edges of church, never
really a part of the spiritual life. He had values that were a lot different
than Christ’s values. He lived a life that was a long ways from anything you
could call Christian.
Then on one Memorial Day weekend, Richard suffered a
terrible seizure. He was rushed to a hospital in Boston where a brain tumor was
diagnosed. He had maybe thirty days to live. When I saw him there in the
hospital, he was a pretty sad sight. I commiserated with Richard for a while
about the tragedy that had befallen him. But toward the end of our
conversation, he took my hand, squeezed it, and said, “Marty, I so need
God.” That day, we prayed together that God would come to Richard.
And God did. In the days that followed, the Lord took him
on a fearless moral inventory of his life. Richard found it lacking, and started
asking God for help turning it around. He made amends to people he’d hurt. He
repaired relationships he’d broken. He became a good husband. And a great
father. He joined the church. Helped his wife teach children in Sunday School.
Richard used to call me up when I was down, and he would lift me up. He became
to me and to others a most valuable friend – always ready to listen, always
with a good word to say. His faith in God grew every day, even while his body
grew weaker.
Richard outlived the thirty-day prognosis. Somehow, he lived another ten years. And during those years, through the redemptive power of Jesus Christ, the imperfect song of Richard’s life became a beautiful symphony!
If Jesus really is the Messiah, then its okay to be human!
Now here’s a second point: if Jesus really is the Messiah, then you can love other people as they are! You see, the coming of the Messiah, we are told, is motivated by God’s love for the world! This means there is a sacred beauty in every human being, and the way it is released within people is through the love of others!
I find myself admiring people of faith who defy convention to find ways of loving people no one else will. That’s how the hold pf slavery was broken, you know. In our day, I’m glad we’re having the argument about homosexuality in the church. I don’t always agree with where it goes, but I admire the courage of those who insist on there being a sacred beauty in every life that deserves to be loved. Not only that, but I’m glad the world has become smaller these days and that we’re more and more rubbing elbows with people from other religious experiences. I believe God is leading us to a new relationship with the world that is founded upon and made possible by love and not theological agreement.
Everyone deserves to be loved! And if Jesus really is the Messiah, you and I can love everyone we meet.
And then, one more thing. If Jesus really is the Messiah, then being a follower of Christ is not about religion, not about doctrines, and not about who’s right and who’s wrong. If Jesus truly is the Messiah, then following Christ means devoting your life to becoming a beautiful person!
I think that’s a refreshing way to look at this Faith of ours. All God wants for you is to become beautiful!
How can that happen to homely human beings like us?
By welcoming the Messiah into your life. By receiving his Spirit. Accepting his Life. Following his Way. Becoming like Him!
Because, you see, Jesus is the
most beautiful person who ever lived! He showed people it’s okay to be human!
He demonstrated that everyone deserves to be loved! And he invited people to
join his parade, adding their lives to his rhythm band that marches through the
world singing La Cucaracha!
And though we might sing a bit out of key, and some of us have no rhythm at all, when we join together with Jesus Christ and each another, somehow the song turns out beautiful!
May Jesus the Messiah help you become more human than you’ve ever been before!