“Testifying to the Light”

John 1:6-8,19-28



Pastor Tom Johnson, December 14, 2014

“Who are you?” John the Baptist is asked.

“I am not the Messiah,” He candidly responds.

“Are you Elijah?”

“No.”

“The prophet?”

“Nope.”

“Please just tell us who you are plainly so we can go back and tell those who sent us.”

“I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord!’”

“Why baptize people if you aren’t the Messiah, Elijah, or the prophet?”

“Because,” John says, “My baptism with water is preparing me and others for Someone special, unique, holy, and of surpassing worth—so much so that I am not even worthy to serve his feet with the simple, menial task of taking off his sandal.”

This conversation illustrates how John the Baptist is a witness. A witness experiences something. A witness then testifies to his or her experience. A witness gives a first hand account of what they have seen, what they heard, smelled, tasted, and felt. A witness tells a story. You can tell by the look in his eyes. You can tell by the sound of his voice. You can tell by the smell of insects and honey on his breath. You can tell by the way he takes hold of you when he plunges you into the water. This guy is credible. He is the real deal. John the Baptist is a trustworthy, sincere witness. His voice crying out in the wilderness is pitched high for large crowds and wide spaces. There is a authentic tone of urgency in his voice. His zeal and passion have the attention of those who hear his testimony. John has experienced the Light. He is now directing others to that Light. He is preparing them for their own encounter of the Light. John is a lesser light pointing to the greater Light.

We have the same call—to prepare the way of the Lord by pointing to the Light. Jesus calls us to witness the light when he teaches us to pray, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” He calls us to testify to the light when he ascends into heaven and says “You shall be my witnesses…to the end of the earth.” John’s example ought to encourage us. We are invited to experience the Light. We get to tell others about the Light. We are his witnesses. We testify to how our lives have been enlightened—how our we have lived through darkness to brighter days.

Like many in college, I had strayed pretty far from the faith of my youth, growing up going to church every Sunday. I remember conversations with our church organist and my mom who sent me away from home and my home-church with their prayers. I know they prayed that I would not stray from the Light. But leaving home and going to college did become a dark period for me. I don’t remember doing anything too outrageous. I just remember that I was groping in the dark emotionally and spiritually. I worried a lot. I had a hard time sleeping. I felt bound in a gloomy world where God took no real interest in me. I lived in that dark void of the universe where Jesus was just someone’s invention—just a made-up story for people who need to cope with guilt and the reality of death. As I made friends, I started to notice a pattern. Some of my friends went to church. Some of them believed in Jesus. Some of them invited me to go to church with them. They started to testify to the Light. There was a real difference in the way that these bearers of Christ’s Light cared for others.

There was nothing spectacular about the place we were—our conversations were in dorm rooms, hallways, and along the sidewalks through campus. It could very well have been in the remote and barren wilderness near the Jordan River. There was nothing complicated about their testimony. They told me what they believed. They told me when they had no good answers for my questions. Like John, their authenticity was stronger than their concern for polished, oratory skills. My Christian friends ate the same diet as me—mostly cafeteria food, junk-food, and the occasional evening out at our favorite Chinese restaurant. But our conversation more nourishing than locusts and sweeter than honey. These witnesses wore—for the most part—blue jeans and sweatshirts. It was a step up from camel skin but they decked out with the Light of the Good News—and robed in the bright righteousness of Christ. One of those friends of mine would later become my wife. It was that experience of Light in my life that ignited an insatiable hunger for the Bible. It reinvigorated a desire that began in my childhood—something that I told my fourth grade teacher in the public school—I wanted to be a pastor.

What bathes my heart in the warmth of God’s Light this morning is the reminder of what it means to be a witness to the Light. You can be as rough around the edges as John. You can be as eccentric as John. You can be as unspectacular as John. You can be as simple and earthy as John. You have a story to tell. Maybe your story is unfolding now. Perhaps you feel overwhelmed by the darkness. Maybe your story is just beginning to unfold as you experience the Light. Perhaps you are waiting for something spectacular and are afraid it will never come. That is why we should listen to the voices crying out in the wilderness. That is why we should not fear to cry out ourselves. You have a story to tell. Tell it in all of its unspectacular glory. Don’t worry about dressing it up in your Sunday’s best. God’s power is in the Light of the Gospel—the good news we experience and the Light that we share. The Light has been born into our lives in the Christ Child. The Light comes to scatter the darkness of this world. And so we pray, even so, come Lord, Jesus.

"Patience"

2 Peter 3:8-15

Pastor Tom Johnson, December 7, 2014

The word patience in Peter’s second letter to believers (μακροθυμία) is a literal rendering from one of my favorite passages. God says to Moses, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exod 34:6). Patience is slowness to anger. God is patient. And so, Peter says we should also wait patiently. “Patience!” says our Scripture. “Bring down the boil of your anger to a simmer; and then turn off the burner completely. Put the brakes on your rage. Delay your indignation.” As James similarly says, “Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.” We live in our quick-tempered, road-raging, instant-gratifying, short-fused, demanding world. And if you really think about it, impatience is irrational and self-destructive. We are only hurting ourselves by not being patient.

Consider tailgating. Someone drives their car right up on your back bumper and begins to honk. What makes them think that they are in any more of a hurry than I am to get to my destination? Why should I break the law and drive faster and risk getting a speeding ticket so that they can get to the stop light sooner? They will be one car-length closer to the red light than me. Let’s calculate the time gained: a second or two?

Consider sitting down at a restaurant for dinner with that special someone. You sit down and don’t see a server for ten minutes. Another family of twelve people come in and sit down. The server shows up at that moment and hands them menus.  They have 12 questions about the menu. “What is the soup of the day?” “Should we order off the child menu for our 12 year old?” “Does it contain any nuts?” Each passing moment accelerates your sense of injustice and anger.

Consider a much more serious matter: another shooting in the news. Another young person is killed. There are more questions about how law enforcement or the legal system handled the situation. No matter what side you find yourself on, a sense of injustice and anger begins to quicken your spirit. Or consider another Christian who is imprisoned, driven from their home, or killed. “When one part of the Body suffers, the whole Body suffers.” And we are right to ask, “Oh Lord, how long?”

“Wait patiently,” says our Scripture. It’s not worth the high blood pressure. “Be patient,” says the Lord. Don’t let stress and anxiety take it’s toll on your minds, bodies, and spirits. Our demand for immediate justice will only speed us along a course of greater chaos and conflict. “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.” Our text says, “We wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.” It’s a beautiful truth but a tough pill to swallow: we may never have the fullness of God’s justice until Jesus comes back in his glory in the second Advent. That is just way too far into the future—too slow to satisfy our sense of right and wrong. In the meantime, we feel like time is wasting away. We may believe that God’s silence and inactivity is proof that he either does not exist or does not care.

This, I believe, is why many people do not believe in (or trust in) God. How can God allow so much injustice, pain, and sorrow to go on? He seems too slow. So slow, in fact, that he seems altogether absent. Our Scripture says, “With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.” God stands outside the universe with all of its laws of gravity, time, and space. He is not slow about his promise as we perceive time and the flow of human history but slow to anger. He is waiting patiently. As someone’s grandmother once said, “God may not act when we want him to, but he is always on time.” He is patient because with one glance he sees the birth and death of the universe. He knows that what went wrong in the Garden of Eden will be made right when Jesus ushers in Paradise. In the meantime, he has purpose.

And that purpose flows out of a desire of “not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.” Compassion keeps him from angry outbursts. Mercy restrains God from punishing. Love for all his creation constrains his justified wrath. “Regard the patience of our Lord as salvation.” In other words, patience is not only a virtue; patience is redemptive. Patience makes room for people to grow and change. Patience gives time and space for life-transformation. And so God invites us to extend that same space and time to those around us—to wait patiently and to pray earnestly for those around us to experience the same grace. Waiting patiently means to trust in God and compassionate toward others.

Our Scripture invites us to put the best construction on God and our unbelieving neighbor: he only seems slow because he works patiently by his Holy Spirit to draw all people to himself. He is eager to see us turn toward a path of reconciliation with him and one another. He is so eager, in fact, he sent his Son. The first Advent helps us prepare for the second Advent. The eternal Son of God became a human child to adopt us and make us ready to live as daughters and sons in our eternal home. This is the God we serve—our heavenly Father who not only waits patiently but acts deliberately to bring the whole world into the fullness of his justice and blessing. And so we pray, “Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!”

 

“High Priestly Thanksgiving”

Luke 17:11-19

Pastor Tom Johnson, November 27, 2014

In the time the Bible was written, leprosy was not what we would consider one, definable skin condition. Leprosy is a broad label which describes a number of skin conditions. The main passage can be found in Leviticus chapters 13 and 14. In this very long, ceremonial law passage, you will find 91 verses painstakingly describing lumps, cysts, discolored skin and hair, oozing puss, exposed raw flesh, infection, rashes, scars, itching…would you like for me to continue? All this to say, you nor I would not want to suffer any of these conditions. And what added insult to injury was the fact that these texts also describe how God’s people should be shunned and exiled from their home and worship communities. They were to be avoided. Lepers were to walk around in the wilderness. If they saw someone else coming their way, they were instructed by the Law to cover their upper lip and yell, “Unclean! Unclean!” twice—just to make sure you stayed away.

Today, the Center of Disease Control has “Guidance for Monitoring and Movement of Persons with Potential Ebola Virus Exposure.” It is controversial because of the delicate balance between an individual’s rights and the health of the greater community. But in Jesus’ day, the tip of balance was against the individual. Today, whole villages need to be educated in countries ravaged by Ebola. A lack of education prevents people from returning to their homes even after surviving infection. It is not unlike AIDS in our nation and all the education that is necessary not to bring further suffering to people who are already suffering quite enough.

And so it is with these ten lepers in our passage. They are in exile. They are ragged, diseased, and rejected. They show extraordinary courage by approaching Jesus—yet keeping their distance from him. They live with extraordinary stress. When Jesus tells them to show themselves to the priests, that means something to nine of them. For the nine Israelite lepers, it means going through a very lengthy and expensive process at the temple to restore them to their communities and regain access to temple. It means nothing to the one Samaritan.

For the Samaritan, it means that he was losing nine companions. He will return to the Samaria perhaps. He certainly has no reason to join the other nine to the temple. He has a greater stigma—he is not 100% of Jewish heritage. He will still be denied access to the temple. I hope you recognize Jesus’ humor—the delightful and playful way he deals with this double outcast. “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” “Um, Jesus, you told them to go and show themselves to the priests. What do you mean, ‘Where are they?’? They are doing exactly what you told them to do. The one came back because you gave instructions to the wrong person.”  Where else did this Samaritan have to go? Like Peter said and we often say in our liturgy, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life!” (John 6:68). Jesus is probably the only Priest the Samaritan ever met. Jesus was certainly the only Temple into whose presence he would enter. Jesus does something radical here: he bypasses all the Levitical law of sin offerings, thanks offerings, blood and grain offerings, and meticulous examination by a priest in public for all to see. He knowingly sends the ten back to a system that is inferior and outdated. He sends the one Samaritan to a system that is irrelevant to him. And then Jesus, with tongue-in-cheek and a twinkle in his eye acts as if he does not know why they behave the way they do. He does this to reveal God’s greater plan for all people.

Jesus celebrates the Samaritan’s faith because through his journey as a foreigner and leper he discovers a greater Priest and a greater Temple. Through this particular experience of a Samaritan, we find a universal promise for all humanity. The other nine should have been that much more aware of the One they just had been healed by—their thanksgiving should have been as profound as the One who cleansed them. Even though they also had the stigma of leprosy like the Samaritan, the nine are still numbered among the privileged because of their Jewish ancestry. But they are returning to a system that falls short of just how universal God’s plan is. Their privilege, ironically enough, may have prevented them from seeing just how much cleansing they could have and just how deep and wide our thanksgiving can be. Privilege can keep us from recognizing the fullness of blessings we have.

And so it is for us as we journey through what can often feel like a wilderness. We begin as exiles and with the stigma of not feeling welcome into holy presence of God. We come to realize, though, that we are all on this journey together. We are all misfits—unclean and filthy with the leprosy of our sin. Thanks be to God we have each other as companions! Thanks be to God that he does not wait for us to get our act together, cleanse ourselves, nor pay the high premium for the healing of our souls. No, he makes the first move toward us even though he could simply keep his distance. He sends his Son Jesus into the wilderness of this world to take on the same skin and flesh as us—tempted by the same sin—yet uncontaminated. For he is the clean and spotless Lamb of God. He pays the premium for our healing—not with gold and silver—not with the blood of birds, rams, or sheep—but with the priceless and pure Blood of Jesus. Jesus is the new and greater Temple—the High Priest of Heaven and Earth. He cleanses us by the water, Word, and Spirit and adopts us into the family of God. It only makes sense for us to stop in our tracks, turn around from a course of fruitless and outdated ambition, fall on our knees, remember all the blessings God has given us—body and soul—and give Jesus a shout of thankful praise.