a great light has shined

When I was a kid, the dental office had a roller skate picture on the wall, and enormous big bright lights.  You know what you got to look at while the dentist was working on your teeth?  The dentist, or the roller skate.  That was it.  These days, you kids have got it so easy - you get individual tvs to watch, and you get yourself a nice, convenient pair of sunglasses to protect your eyes.  Protect your eyes from what?  

From this:

This thing is, this all-seeing eye in the sky reminds me a lot of GladOs from Portal, which shouldn't be surprising, as it does seem like this is an eye staring deep into your face.

Now, this light is so bright you gotta wear shades, because it's pointed directly at your face.  And although you and I may complain bitterly about the light shining at us, as just one more thing we don't care for about the dental office (you know, in with paying someone good money to make your gums bleed), that makes you not want to rush back.  But the enormously powerful light is the thing that lets the dentist do his or her job properly.  Without that amount of light shining directly at you, the dentist would have to just sort of guess where to drill . And I doubt you'd like that very much.

It gets me thinking about the head mirrors that doctors used to wear, when they'd have a massive metal disc strapped to their heads so that they could reflect the ambient light onto where they'd be looking.  This would help them to see much better what they were examining or what they were planning on working on.  Those, of course, looked a lot like this:

Now, why on earth am I talking about dental lights and about medical head reflectors?  Well, because of the concept of the light of God.  Now, in the Gospel reading from Sunday, it quoted Isaiah, saying that the people dwelling in darkness, on them has a great light dawned.  And this is almost universally seen as a good thing, that it's a wonderful event that this great light has dawned on us, and we are universally the better for it.  And why not?  We're people who need light to see, we need light to operate, if we don't have light, then we can't operate at all.  

But we only like light on our terms.  We only like light when it works in our favor.  We want to see, but we don't always want to be seen.  We know by now that we look better once the lights are down just a little bit lower.  Oh, of course, it wasn't always that way.  It used to be back in the day that you would do nothing but want to be photographed, you'd want to do nothing but be in the limelight, you'd want to be seen by everyone as a beautiful and unique snowflake.  But then something happened.  You

became aware of your own failings, your own flaws.  You became aware that you were aging, that you couldn't hold up to the army of hollywood starlets and super hunks that were churned out on tv and movies every year, and who never seem to age a day.  And once you figured that out, well, all of a sudden you wanted to be in fewer photographs, you wanted to be in fewer home movies, you wanted the lights to be way down low for when cuddles happen, you want dinner to be over candelight.  As the lights come up, and come all the way up, all your deficiencies are seen for what they are.  And they're not going away anytime soon.  So your only option is to turn the dimmer on your old brooklyn lantern way down low, and then you look a lot better.

Now, this is a major issue for us as Christians, too.  We want to turn the lights down, even on the light of the world.  We want to take the light of Christ, and turn the dimmer switch all the way down.  Oh, sure, we don't want to turn it off, but we want to keep it on low, so that we can't be seen in all our sin and shame by his all revealing light.

When the disciples come face to face with Jesus in all his majesty, it is like the full force of the headlamp or the dental light.  Every imperfection is laid bare, every sin and misdeed is shown in massive detail.  And when that happens, you have two choices - either tell the dentist to stop, or to let him fix what he has seen has gone wrong.

The other day, I seemed to have flossed out a filling, and so had to make a pretty quick dental appointment to get it put back in.  When I went in, the dentist turned on his massive light, gave me the sunglasses, and told me to open my mouth.  When he looked in, he said 'ok, it looks like a conservative filling came out, should we put it back in?'  And I was flabbergasted.  I was shocked that that was even a question, really.  So I said 'no, just leave it missing, that'll be fine.'  And he laughed for a second, and told me 'you know, I have to get consent for everything I do.  And you just sitting in that chair doesn't mean consent.'

That's true for church, too.  The bright light of the law shines on us, and points out our imperfections.  It shows us just how far we have to go, it shows us how much of a disaster we are, it shows everything that has gone wrong with us.  And Jesus deseprately wants to be the great physician, the great dentist, carving away what has gone wrong and replacing it with what is good and proper.  But just sitting in that chair doesn't give Jesus consent to do what he does.  

This is why the words of Jesus in the reading from Sunday are as important as they are.  He shows up on the scene after the arrest of John the Baptist, and proclaims loudly 'Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven has come near.'  Repent.  Repent of what?  All the things that the light shows you.  All the junk you don't want to see, all the junk that you wish wasn't part of you.  Realizing that you're one of those people from John 3:19 - People loved the darkness, for their works were evil.  Yes, we do evil, nasty things, and we don't want God to see them.  

But that doesn't make them go away.

Once the light shines, you have to do the difficult work, the terrible work, of consenting to the drill.  You have to consent to the surgeon's scalpel if you want the cancer to be gone.  Once it has been revealed in the harsh light, then you fall wholly on the mercy of the doctor in question, who promises to take it all away.  Staying in the darkness doesn't make things any better you know.  It tends to make things worse.  But when the light of the world arrives, it shows everything for what it is, and then we can do something about it.  That is, have something done about it.  In that sense, the pew on Sunday is like the dentist's chair.  Jesus wants your repentance, wants your consent to begin the surgery that will save you.  All you have to do is quit fighting him off, and accept his light for what it is, and what it intends to do.

PJ.

Decrease.

When John the Baptist points Jesus out to any and everyone who is around, he calls out in a loud voice 'behold, the Lamb of God!'  This is what we expect to happen, we know the story pretty well, but there are some bonus features that I didn't have a chance to get to in the sermon on Sunday.

Did you notice, in the reading, that John the Baptist is proclaiming Christ to some people who were hanging out with him?  As in, these were disciples of John.  These were followers of John, and he was
basically telling his disciples to stop following him, and to start following Jesus.

Think about that for a second. Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, he was a disciple of John the Baptist.  He was a follower of John, and spent a lot of time learning from him, and growing in his faith through John the Baptist's teachings.  And John has to live out his earlier injunction, where he said 'He must increase, and I must decrease.'  That small sentence is what we as Christians have to deal with, especially when we are on the evangelism train.

We want to have people come to Jesus.  We want people to come to faith, we want them to believe in Jesus, to be part of the family of God, all that.  But we want to be involved in it. We want people to come to Jesus, but come to Him through our work, through what we do.  In effect, we want to be accessories to the faith, we want to be the ones who made the difference, we want to be the ones who do the work, who span the gap between humans and God.

But there's a snag to that.  We don't want people to come to Jesus without us, and in a different way than we do.  In the show Family Guy, there are a couple of episodes in which people can't stand that someone else is the big noise, they can't stand that someone else is well thought of, so they go out of their way to sabotage them.  And that's sort of us, too.  We want to have people follow Jesus, but not at the expense of not following us anymore.  There's a chain of command here, people!

When John the Baptist looks at it, though, he knows that his job is to prepare the world, and the people, for Jesus.  So when some of his disciples leave him, and follow Jesus, he counts it as a victory.  It's a win if people find Jesus, follow Jesus, even at the expense of them following John.  Why am I telling you about this today, though?  Why is this important for us to know now?  I would be fairly sure that none of us would be overly upset if we lost some disciples, since we don't have any disciples.  But the difference for us is going to have to be how much we stand between people and Jesus?

The most damaging thing for mission work is usually Christians.  Not the faith itself, no.  Most people don't have too much of a problem with that.  They don't have a problem with Jesus, either, he's usually deemed to be okay by the majority of people.  But the trouble is when we present ourselves as the best and brightest examples of the faith, the best thing that Christianity has to offer.  We present ourselves as having not just the best prayer life, the best outfits, the best worship style, the best music, the best lives, but having the only ones worthy of consideration.  But when we present ourselves as being the finished product, as the best and brightest, something goes wrong.  We try to conflate ourselves with Jesus, that if someone is going to find Jesus, they are going to have to go through us first.  They will have to be carbon copies of us.  

And that would be fine, of course, if the hype was true.  But it's not.  We actually aren't that great.

 This has to be understood if you want to understand mission work, ministry, any of it.  You need to point to Christ, not to yourself.  The more you point to you, the worse your mission work will be.  You will be a disaster, and so will your mission work, becasue it'll be pointing to you, and not to Jesus.  And you are a poor advertisement for Christianity.

When John says of Jesus 'he must increase, and I must decrease.' And that's exactly what happened.  The ministry of Jesus took off, was a huge success.  It began to span all across the land, he gained followers, he gained stature, and became the most well known person in history.  John?  He lost his followers to Jesus, he got locked up, and his head was eventually presented to Salome as a party favor.  Was John ready for that?  He was. Are you?

Ghandi famously is rumored to have said 'I do not like your Christians.  They are so unlike your Christ.'  If you're a Christian, you should know that that quote is accurate.  If you're a Christian, then
you will be saying things on Sunday mornings like how you have erred and strayed like lost sheep, about how there is not health in you.  You will be saying things about how you're by nature sinful and unclean, and how you cannot heal yourself.  You need to understand that this is all the case because you are a long way away from where Jesus is.  You are a long way away from where the perfection of Jesus is.

So how is mission work ever to be done?  How can you ever do mission work if you're such a dud?  If you're a sinner, and I'm a sinner, if we are far, far away from our stated goals and will never get there, if we have in mind what a Christian should be, and yet are so far away, how are we to possibly be ambassadors for that faith?

He must increase, and we must decrease.

In any mission effort, in any attempt to bring Christ to the nations, we have to remove ourselves as much as possible from the issue.  The more we put ourselves in the way, the worse Jesus ends up looking.  But if he increases, and we decrease, then things work properly.  Then the mission work doesn't depend on us and how great we are.  The mission work doesn't have to depend on how fantastic I am, but on how fantastic Jesus is.  He's good enough to stand on his own merits, he's good enough to stand on his own good times, and doesn't need my help.  He is great, and I am small.  Any evangelism work that I do will have to essentially involve myself only as a redeemed sinner, not a hero, not a conquerer, not a stand out great guy, but as a sinner who has fallen short of the glory of God, and who needs assistance.  That's all.

And in doing so, all of a sudden, it's not about me.  It's about Jesus.  And then the evangelism doesn't rest on my shoulders, but upon his.  Then people won't look at me and say 'boy, he's a bad guy.  I guess this Christianity thing is no good.' but rather 'Boy, he's a bad guy.  Isn't it great that the church, and Jesus himself, have time for him.'

Peace be with you.  Humility be with you.  Heck, humility be with us all.

PJ.

Baptism into death

It was the baptism of christ on Sunday, that was the Gospel reading at least.  And the baptism of Jesus signifies the start of his ministry, and the beginning of his work in the world.  And when Jesus is baptized, when he comes up out of the water, the Holy Spirit descends on him like a dove, and a voice from Heaven calls out 'this is my son, in whom I am well pleased.'

It's a beautiful story, and a wonderful scene, one that has been depicted in lots of wonderful liturgical artwork.  Do a quick Bing search for the baptism of Christ, and you'll find innumerable images of Jesus stepping up out of the water, hands folded in prayer, and face perfectly composed as the dove descends upon him.

But hold on there.  What is the next thing that happens.  You see, this is one of those moments where I find our structure of readings to be inadequate, because next week, we'll be talking about Jesus as the lamb of God, and we'll be missing the next part of the Gospel of Matthew.  You see, the Gospel of Matthew, the next thing that happens is that Jesus is led immediately out into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil.  That is to say, that same spirit that descended on him like a dove, that same spirit that was part of that serene moment, that spirit is the one spurring him into the wilderness to do battle with the Devil in the desert.

Does that bother you?  Would it bother you more if I told you that you were given that same baptism too?  Nearly all the big issues facing the church, and the church in crisis, is what is it for?  We are living in an age in which the traditional roles that the church has occupied; feeding the poor, visiting the sick, teaching the children, all that stuff is handled by government organizations.  The institutional charity aspect of the church is all but gone, and so the question is, once again, what is it for?  And what is your baptism for?

What are you given in baptism?  Well, if you're a Lutheran (and really, why wouldn't you be), you'll

know your small Catechism, and you'll know the part in it that talks about baptism.  It talks about the washing of the regeneration of the Holy Spirit.  And this is key.  Why are you given that Holy Spirit unless it's for the same reason that Jesus was?  You see, we tend to think of the Holy Spirit, and baptism, too, as the comforter, as a sign of assurance for us, which it is.  Baptism is our great point of Christian certainty, where we get to look at one moment in our lives, and say with absolute assuredness that this is when and where God himself washed us clean of our sins, and therefore we are saved through his awesome power.

But the Holy Spirit, what's he doing with you?  Is it anything?  Or are you one of the talents that was buried, in order that you might not go to waste?  The thing is, the Spirit of God has not equipped you with a weak frail cooked pasta soul, designed to just be acceptable to go to and from church and that's it.

The Spirit of God has equipped you for battle.

Think about the spirit of God and how it gets discussed in the scriptures.  2 Timothy 1:7 tells us that, in the KJV, 'God hath not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.'  We were not given that Spirit to be timid, or to be fearful, or to cower in the church, and to wait for
other people to show up here so that they can be hastily converted as long as we don't have to talk to them aaaaaaagh!

But you were not given the Spirit of God to be a shy wallflower.  You were not given the Spirit of God to be serene, hands folded in prayer, for your entire life.  What would the purpose of that be?  You were given the same baptism that Jesus was given, that is, you were given the Holy Spirit, and then immediately, you are driven by that same Spirit to do battle in the wilderness with the Devil.

Which wilderness?  Gosh, pick a spot!  Where are you right now?  That's the wilderness that you need to be in.  If it's anything but inside the church (although honestly, sometimes inside the church makes

sense too), you need to be doing battle there.  Never forget that Jesus wasn't in a car at that point, he wasn't driving a moped, a bicycle, or even a skateboard.  The wilderness was walking distance from where he was baptized.  And your wilderness is walking distance away from where you were baptized too.  Usually right outside the door.

And yes, if you go out into that wilderness to do battle with the devil, if you go out there to resist temptation and to be pushed and tempted, you will get beaten up, you will get pushed around, and dirty and filthy, and browbeaten and messed up and starving.  Sad to tell you that.  But that's what the faith is all about, and that's why you were given that Spirit, to go and use it.

The baptism of Christ and his trip to the wilderness is a wonderful illustration of our week.  We have those times in church of quiet serenity, those times in which we are restored and revitalized, where we feel the presence of the spirit of God, where our spiritual reserves are replenished and we are reminded of the forgiveness of sins that have been given us through Christ.  And then it's back out into the wilderness to continue our struggle.

I know, I know, that's not great news.  It just happens to be the truth.  Why on earth do you think that Paul phrases things in the book of Ephesions as the full armor of God?  Why do you think it talks about the Sword of the Spirit unless you're supposed to, you know, actually use it?  The helmet of salvation, the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, all of that.  And why are we given that equipment?

'Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may stand against the schemes of the evil one. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, agaisnt the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places'
 (Ephesians 6:11-12)

Why would you be equipped for all of this unless God sincerely believe that you were to go out and do battle in the wilderness against the forces of temptation.  When?  Immediately.  As soon as church is done, you go out into the howling wilderness to do battle.  You will be hungry, you will be tired, you will be browbeaten, you will be tempted, and the Devil is smart enough to tempt you where you are weak.  But that is the reason behind your revitalization at church - you are equipped for the work you must do.  That spirit is not one of frailty, but of power, and of love.

As usual, ask yourself the question, about baptism, about the Lord's supper, about the church itself from the top down.  What is it for?  Is it to make you feel good only, or is to equip you and spur you to do what is good, what is right, what is necessary in the world?  Sins forgiven, renewed and strengthened for what can, what will, what must be done.

PJ.

Home Alone? Hug a tree.

Remember Home Alone?  Sure you do.  Great film.  It's the one that both made Macauly Culkin into a star, and simultaneously killed his stardom with typecasting.  Anyhoo, Macaulay Culkin played a small child who was left behind by his parents when they went with all the family to Paris for Christmas.  Great film, but it doesn't hold up so well under inspection these days.  It doesn't hold up too well based on two salient and preposterous plot points.

Firstly, the idea that two criminals, career criminals, hardened criminals, could be perpetually foiled by

a small child using household tools as weapons.  This is the ultimate child fantasy, one in which you can outsmart adults, be the coolest kid around, and single-handedly defend your home against rampaging invaders.  It is extremely unlikely, though, that in any way shape or form, you would find that a small child could repel invaders who wanted to get in, or that you would find invaders who would still be interested in breaking in if they know you're home.

Secondly, that a family could not only leave the house, but get to an airport, board an airplane, and be in the air by the time the realized that they had one child too few.

Of course those plot points are preposterous, but that second one deserves special mention, given that it is, shall we say, quite salient for today.  You see, the story from the Gospels for this weekend is the story of the boy Jesus in the temple.  And his parents look for him like crazy all over the place because they'd lost him, left Jerusalem, and had to find him in an absolute panic.  And so they searched everywhere for him, and finally found him after three days, exactly where he knew he was all along.

Now, hold on a second here.  This theme of searching for Jesus, and finding him should be of some familiarity to us, shouldn't it?  The other time that someone searched for Jesus was when he had died, and was buried, and placed in a tomb.  And on the third day, when they went to go and anoint his body, they found that he wasn't there.  An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and told them that they should not be seeking the living among the dead.

And this cuts to the heart of the problem, doesn't it?  This is the big issue that we have to deal with when it comes to faith and especially how we approach and deal with God.  You see, the human experience is one big long story of looking for God in the stupidest places, trying to find him where he isn't, desperately searching for him all over the place, and getting more and more lost.  This is the experience that started way back in the days of Cain and Abel, in which Cain was sure that he had access to God, that he'd found the right way, and when it was revealed that he didn't, he committed murther.  And this, right here, is an example, and there are many many more, of how people get into more and more of a fix.  They wander off searching for God.

But the thing that they had to realize back in the temple, and at the tomb, was that it isn't God who is lost.  He found them, those who were lost.  This happens constantly with those who are lost, who wander away trying to be found, is that they just get more and more lost.  What is difficult to understand or to appreciate, is that when it comes to us and God, we are the ones who are lost, not him.  We are the ones who have wandered away, and who are fumbling in the darkness, not God.  He's fine.

And when you understand that, then the incarnation makes a whole new set of sense.  Jesus' parents find him in the temple, and ask how he could have treated them so, as they'd been searching in great distress.  And Jesus asks why they were looking all over the place, and informs them that they should have known that he'd be in his father's house.  Obviously.

But he didn't stay in the Temple, he went home with them in all submission and obedience.  In other words, he went where they were going.  He left where he was, and went where they were going.  And this is what the incarnation is all about.  It's about Jesus not waiting for you to find him, it's about him leaving heaven, the temple, life, the tomb, to find you.

So, knowing that you're lost, what is the wisdom?  How do you get unlost?  Well, the conventional wisdom told to us as fourth graders was that if we were ever lost in the wilderness, to hug a tree.

The idea is that if you are lost, stay put, and those who are not lost will find you.  If you keep moving, you will make it impossible for you to be found.  And more than anyone else, Christians should remember this advice, the advice for survival.  If you're a lost sinner, if you're a lost child, if you're lost and deserving of hellfire and damnation, then the best thing you can do is to hug a tree.  Which tree?

This tree.  The tree of the cross.  The tree that Jesus was hanged upon, bearing our sins upon him.  This is the deal, is that the more we try to find God, the more we try to figure it out, the more effort we expend trying to make stuff happen, the worse things get.  You're lost, so hug a tree.  Hug that tree, hug the tree of the cross of Christ.  Hug that tree for all you're worth, cling fast to it, for that is where salvation is.  It is in his wounds where he poured out his precious blood for us.  It is in the tree that he carried, in the nails that pierced him, in the spear that ran him through, in the crown of thorns, in all those things that were borne for you, so that you might live.  

When you find yourself running into people, religious people, who drive you crazy, who make things awkward, who use their faith to make everything worse, ask yourself how much of that is Jesus, and how much is them.  It's incumbent on us to stop adding these things to the faith, to not add anything to the book of Christ, but instead of allowing him to find us, to stop running, to stop flailing, and to just hug that tree.  All we need to do is to stop and be found.  God's not lost, you are the one who is lost.  Stop fleeing, stop getting more lost, and be found by him.  That's what the incarnation is all about.  Jesus coming to save sinners.  Not waiting for them to find him, but him finding them.

Enjoy the new year.  Enjoy the incarnation.  Enjoy your faith.

PJ.