Epiphany: Glory Beyond Our Expecting
Sermon
Sermons On The Gospel Readings
Series I, Cycle C
In 1986 a relatively unknown basketball team from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock defeated the highly-favored Notre Dame team in the NCAA basketball tournament. Reporters who crowded around Coach Mike Newell following the game wanted his analysis of the victory. He answered, simply and significantly, "Your only limitation is your imagination."
Our lives are often fenced in by our low expectations. This is true not only of what we expect of ourselves, but also of what we expect to happen in our world, and what we think might be the purpose of God in our times.
It was so with a generation of Jews over 21 centuries ago. Their nation had not had a powerful prophetic witness in perhaps four centuries. Their knowledge of the glory of God was almost entirely historic. They could read in their Jewish scriptures of the wonders of the Lord as experienced by their ancestors of times long past; but they had never seen such glory, nor had they ever talked with anyone who had.
Thus, when John the Baptizer appeared on the scene, people had no standard by which to judge him. Obviously he was a man sent from God, but jut how far-reaching was his ministry? Was he only a passing prophetic figure; or was he one of those persons whose role had been predicted by earlier prophets? Was he, perhaps, the one the people wanted most to see -- the Messiah?
John quickly advised the people that their expectations were too low. We read his words with a reverence which limits their sting. He all but ridiculed their confusing him with the Christ. My baptism, John said, uses water; his will be with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Could there be a greater contrast?
What a shock that must have been to the crowds. Although John used water for his baptismal rites, his style was anything but water-like; if any word could aptly describe John, it would have been fire. And it was fire, John said, that would characterize the baptism of the Christ who was coming. "You think I'm important enough to be considered a prospect for the Christ?" John continued. "He's so much above and beyond me that I can't even qualify to be his valet; I'm not worthy to untie the thongs of his sandals." John was trying to tell the people that their expectations were far too low. The Jewish people had been without a prophetic voice for so long that they were elevating the forerunner to the position of Christ.
What qualities made the ministry of Jesus superior to that of John the Baptizer? How can Jesus be referred to as a source of fire, when John himself seems much more fiery a personality? A scholar in another day says that John's style had "the quiescence of a negative and prudential morality," while Jesus offered the living, vital energy of a true moral and spiritual enthusiasm.
John's call to repentance was necessary and noble; and we must begin there. But that kind of negative morality is not enough. It's sad that we Christians seem to get bogged down at that level of moral power. We often measure our goodness by the number of things we refrain from doing, rather than moving on to the positive righteousness of holy enthusiasm. "Don't tell me what you don't do," a backwoods preacher in another generation once said to his negatively-inclined people. "The nearest picket fence doesn't do those things, either. Tell me what you do! Tell me something positive that's happened to you, for Jesus' sake!"
Jesus calls us to such positive goodness. Entrenched evil will never be overcome by reacting; there must be something alive, compelling, and persuasive in our goodness.
That ought to be clear to us simply in the three key words of the Christian life -- faith, love, and hope. These are not reactive words. They are positive, aggressive, and challenging. Hope is not a word to characterize retreat, but advance. So, too, with faith. Faith is a power which reaches out; it is a marching, advancing term.
And love! What a positive word that is! Hate is a reacting good, dependent on the face, manner, or conduct of the other person. But love doesn't wait to react. Christian love sets the pace in a relationship, rather than simply reacting or responding to that which others have done. It doesn't wait to see what the other person's manner or conduct may be: it is resolved to love, whatever. And in those cases where the conduct of the other party is negative and destructive, love has the power to overcome.
It is ironic that we Christians are often thought of as a negative people, when everything about our heritage in Jesus Christ is positive. True, we say no to many things: hate, war, poverty, sin, meanness, and fear. But we say no to those qualities simply because they are negotiations; and it is by saying no to them that we can say yes to life. We follow one who came into the world that we might have life, and have it abundantly. Our Lord's purpose in the world was not to restrict and limit our lives; but to set us free, so that we might take more of life's conquest.
One of the ancient documents of Christianity records Jesus as saying, "He that is near me is near the fire." I think it is almost impossible for us to grasp such a picture of our Lord. We have lived all our lives in a world -- particularly in the western world -- which has benefitted from the fire he brought to the earth. We cannot easily imagine a society without many of those benefits and glories. Let us discover how many ways Jesus Christ came as fire.
The modern Russian novelist, Boris Pasternak, put it powerfully in his novel, Dr. Zhivago. First-century Rome, he said, was "a flea market of borrowed gods and conquered peoples, a bargain basement on two floors ... And then, into this tasteless heap of gold and marble, He came, light and clothed in an aura, emphatically human, deliberately provincial, Galilean, and at that moment gods and nations ceased to be and man came into being ..." (p. 43). Jesus sent the value of the human creature into a whole new level. A society which looked upon children as of limited value -- to be pushed to the background -- watched in amazement as the Great Teacher interrupted himself to take children on his knee for blessing. A world which was surfeited with the halt and the blind, and which told such persons to stay out of the way, was baffled by the One who stopped his procession to heal a blind beggar.
This was fire. It was a burning of the old values and prejudices, clearing the way for the birth of compassion.
It showed itself, also, in the world of human prejudices. The best people of Jesus' day knew only one way to deal with people they judged to be sinners, and that was to shun them. To their amazement, Jesus -- who was himself clearly a good human being -- chose to associate with such persons. It was not that he condoned their sins; to the contrary, he gave people a passion to be done with such a life, so that -- like Zacchaeus -- they became transformed and productive citizens. That was no tame "water" approach, but fire.
It cut another way, too. The super citizens, who paraded their religion, were condemned by Jesus. He called them hypocrites and playactors -- people who made a performance of religion without offering any reality. Those who the people had been taught to revere were suddenly cut to size. That was fire, for sure!
So, too, with the world of human fears. Violent insanity terrified the first-century world, and it still unnerves ours. They called it demon possession; and whatever that term may lack in scientific precision, it is wonderfully accurate in the picture it provides. Jesus walked boldly into such cases, offering a declaration of freedom for those who had been bound by hell. Leprosy was the most dreaded disease of the time -- not only because in some instances it was contagious, but because in its worst forms it was dreadfully destructive. The leper was required to warn others to avoid him, and people quickly responded, in terror, to such a warning. Jesus chose not to flee, but to walk into the world of the leper. He touched the untouchable, and made them whole. That, surely, is fire. John's water is tame by comparison.
At times, Jesus invaded even the domain of death. "She is not dead, just sleeping," he told a group gathered to mourn the passing of a girl. It was an absurd word to those bowed by grief, a word so far removed from the realm of possibility that they would hardly give it a hearing. But Jesus made the absurdity into a fact. When someone walks into the domain of death and emerges with life, that is fire.
We find it hard to read these stories with fresh and open minds. As a result, we probably fall into the same error as did the people in John the Baptizer's time. They were looking for a messiah who was cut to John's specifications. He seemed to them to be just about "the right size." You and I are likely to do the same thing today. We continue to domesticate Jesus, to make him manageable. We make him a Lord of water rather than of fire.
Our expectations are almost always too small. We shut God out of too many areas of our lives. Sometimes it is because we fear that if we let him in, he will make demands on us which we aren't ready to fulfill. Sometimes we deprive ourselves of beauty and blessings because we simply do not seem to understand that God wants our lives to be victorious and fulfilling. Jesus Christ has come to bring fire into the world.
Perhaps our problem is even greater than that encountered by the people in John's day. They had limited expectations because they had never seen anyone like Jesus. Thus they thought the Messiah would be nothing more than a slightly enlarged version of a prophet; and John fit that description very well. But we've read about Jesus and we've heard about him since we sere children, so we think we know what to expect. And, in most cases, we aren't expecting fire or glory. That's a pity, because we're likely to get what we expect.
John the Baptizer knew that the Christ was to be someone far beyond his dimensions, and beyond the expectations of the crowds that had come to see him. As a result, he was all the more surprised and nonplussed when Jesus came to him for baptism. As Matthew reports it, John hesitated to baptize Jesus: "I should be baptized by you," he said, "not you by me."
But Jesus insisted on receiving John's baptism. People often ask why. After all, John's baptism was for repentance from sin, and we understand that Jesus was free from sin. Why, then, was it necessary for him to be baptized?
Jesus' own answer was, "Let it be so for now. For in this way we shall do all that God requires" (Matthew 3:15). That is, Jesus was ready to fulfill the routine requirements of his calling.
His answer and his attitude are instructive. Many of us are inclined to become restless with the requirements of life. We seek shortcuts. Some of the prerequisites of education, profession, family life, and citizenship seem petty and unnecessary. Perhaps sometimes they are. But it is important for us to bring ourselves under the disciplines of life. They usually have a purpose.
Perhaps Jesus especially wanted by this act to identify himself with us human beings. For him, baptism was not necessary for cleansing from sin, but it was an opportunity to declare himself part of our human race; in our needs, as well as in our potential glory.
I welcome the prospect of a baptism as I enter into this new year; and so, I hope, do you. I need a renewed sense of my baptism in water. I want to feel again the sense of cleansing; a freshness and a lovely purity.
But I want, also, a baptism of fire. I want to feel the grand expectation that God has invested glory in this year; not only in some general sense, but in a specific way, for you and for me. I don't want to limit God's purposes and possibilities in my life by a low expectation. Why should we settle for water when God's promise for you and for me is fire? Thanks be to God for high expectations, and for a Lord who waits graciously to fulfill them.
J. Ellsworth Kalas
Our lives are often fenced in by our low expectations. This is true not only of what we expect of ourselves, but also of what we expect to happen in our world, and what we think might be the purpose of God in our times.
It was so with a generation of Jews over 21 centuries ago. Their nation had not had a powerful prophetic witness in perhaps four centuries. Their knowledge of the glory of God was almost entirely historic. They could read in their Jewish scriptures of the wonders of the Lord as experienced by their ancestors of times long past; but they had never seen such glory, nor had they ever talked with anyone who had.
Thus, when John the Baptizer appeared on the scene, people had no standard by which to judge him. Obviously he was a man sent from God, but jut how far-reaching was his ministry? Was he only a passing prophetic figure; or was he one of those persons whose role had been predicted by earlier prophets? Was he, perhaps, the one the people wanted most to see -- the Messiah?
John quickly advised the people that their expectations were too low. We read his words with a reverence which limits their sting. He all but ridiculed their confusing him with the Christ. My baptism, John said, uses water; his will be with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Could there be a greater contrast?
What a shock that must have been to the crowds. Although John used water for his baptismal rites, his style was anything but water-like; if any word could aptly describe John, it would have been fire. And it was fire, John said, that would characterize the baptism of the Christ who was coming. "You think I'm important enough to be considered a prospect for the Christ?" John continued. "He's so much above and beyond me that I can't even qualify to be his valet; I'm not worthy to untie the thongs of his sandals." John was trying to tell the people that their expectations were far too low. The Jewish people had been without a prophetic voice for so long that they were elevating the forerunner to the position of Christ.
What qualities made the ministry of Jesus superior to that of John the Baptizer? How can Jesus be referred to as a source of fire, when John himself seems much more fiery a personality? A scholar in another day says that John's style had "the quiescence of a negative and prudential morality," while Jesus offered the living, vital energy of a true moral and spiritual enthusiasm.
John's call to repentance was necessary and noble; and we must begin there. But that kind of negative morality is not enough. It's sad that we Christians seem to get bogged down at that level of moral power. We often measure our goodness by the number of things we refrain from doing, rather than moving on to the positive righteousness of holy enthusiasm. "Don't tell me what you don't do," a backwoods preacher in another generation once said to his negatively-inclined people. "The nearest picket fence doesn't do those things, either. Tell me what you do! Tell me something positive that's happened to you, for Jesus' sake!"
Jesus calls us to such positive goodness. Entrenched evil will never be overcome by reacting; there must be something alive, compelling, and persuasive in our goodness.
That ought to be clear to us simply in the three key words of the Christian life -- faith, love, and hope. These are not reactive words. They are positive, aggressive, and challenging. Hope is not a word to characterize retreat, but advance. So, too, with faith. Faith is a power which reaches out; it is a marching, advancing term.
And love! What a positive word that is! Hate is a reacting good, dependent on the face, manner, or conduct of the other person. But love doesn't wait to react. Christian love sets the pace in a relationship, rather than simply reacting or responding to that which others have done. It doesn't wait to see what the other person's manner or conduct may be: it is resolved to love, whatever. And in those cases where the conduct of the other party is negative and destructive, love has the power to overcome.
It is ironic that we Christians are often thought of as a negative people, when everything about our heritage in Jesus Christ is positive. True, we say no to many things: hate, war, poverty, sin, meanness, and fear. But we say no to those qualities simply because they are negotiations; and it is by saying no to them that we can say yes to life. We follow one who came into the world that we might have life, and have it abundantly. Our Lord's purpose in the world was not to restrict and limit our lives; but to set us free, so that we might take more of life's conquest.
One of the ancient documents of Christianity records Jesus as saying, "He that is near me is near the fire." I think it is almost impossible for us to grasp such a picture of our Lord. We have lived all our lives in a world -- particularly in the western world -- which has benefitted from the fire he brought to the earth. We cannot easily imagine a society without many of those benefits and glories. Let us discover how many ways Jesus Christ came as fire.
The modern Russian novelist, Boris Pasternak, put it powerfully in his novel, Dr. Zhivago. First-century Rome, he said, was "a flea market of borrowed gods and conquered peoples, a bargain basement on two floors ... And then, into this tasteless heap of gold and marble, He came, light and clothed in an aura, emphatically human, deliberately provincial, Galilean, and at that moment gods and nations ceased to be and man came into being ..." (p. 43). Jesus sent the value of the human creature into a whole new level. A society which looked upon children as of limited value -- to be pushed to the background -- watched in amazement as the Great Teacher interrupted himself to take children on his knee for blessing. A world which was surfeited with the halt and the blind, and which told such persons to stay out of the way, was baffled by the One who stopped his procession to heal a blind beggar.
This was fire. It was a burning of the old values and prejudices, clearing the way for the birth of compassion.
It showed itself, also, in the world of human prejudices. The best people of Jesus' day knew only one way to deal with people they judged to be sinners, and that was to shun them. To their amazement, Jesus -- who was himself clearly a good human being -- chose to associate with such persons. It was not that he condoned their sins; to the contrary, he gave people a passion to be done with such a life, so that -- like Zacchaeus -- they became transformed and productive citizens. That was no tame "water" approach, but fire.
It cut another way, too. The super citizens, who paraded their religion, were condemned by Jesus. He called them hypocrites and playactors -- people who made a performance of religion without offering any reality. Those who the people had been taught to revere were suddenly cut to size. That was fire, for sure!
So, too, with the world of human fears. Violent insanity terrified the first-century world, and it still unnerves ours. They called it demon possession; and whatever that term may lack in scientific precision, it is wonderfully accurate in the picture it provides. Jesus walked boldly into such cases, offering a declaration of freedom for those who had been bound by hell. Leprosy was the most dreaded disease of the time -- not only because in some instances it was contagious, but because in its worst forms it was dreadfully destructive. The leper was required to warn others to avoid him, and people quickly responded, in terror, to such a warning. Jesus chose not to flee, but to walk into the world of the leper. He touched the untouchable, and made them whole. That, surely, is fire. John's water is tame by comparison.
At times, Jesus invaded even the domain of death. "She is not dead, just sleeping," he told a group gathered to mourn the passing of a girl. It was an absurd word to those bowed by grief, a word so far removed from the realm of possibility that they would hardly give it a hearing. But Jesus made the absurdity into a fact. When someone walks into the domain of death and emerges with life, that is fire.
We find it hard to read these stories with fresh and open minds. As a result, we probably fall into the same error as did the people in John the Baptizer's time. They were looking for a messiah who was cut to John's specifications. He seemed to them to be just about "the right size." You and I are likely to do the same thing today. We continue to domesticate Jesus, to make him manageable. We make him a Lord of water rather than of fire.
Our expectations are almost always too small. We shut God out of too many areas of our lives. Sometimes it is because we fear that if we let him in, he will make demands on us which we aren't ready to fulfill. Sometimes we deprive ourselves of beauty and blessings because we simply do not seem to understand that God wants our lives to be victorious and fulfilling. Jesus Christ has come to bring fire into the world.
Perhaps our problem is even greater than that encountered by the people in John's day. They had limited expectations because they had never seen anyone like Jesus. Thus they thought the Messiah would be nothing more than a slightly enlarged version of a prophet; and John fit that description very well. But we've read about Jesus and we've heard about him since we sere children, so we think we know what to expect. And, in most cases, we aren't expecting fire or glory. That's a pity, because we're likely to get what we expect.
John the Baptizer knew that the Christ was to be someone far beyond his dimensions, and beyond the expectations of the crowds that had come to see him. As a result, he was all the more surprised and nonplussed when Jesus came to him for baptism. As Matthew reports it, John hesitated to baptize Jesus: "I should be baptized by you," he said, "not you by me."
But Jesus insisted on receiving John's baptism. People often ask why. After all, John's baptism was for repentance from sin, and we understand that Jesus was free from sin. Why, then, was it necessary for him to be baptized?
Jesus' own answer was, "Let it be so for now. For in this way we shall do all that God requires" (Matthew 3:15). That is, Jesus was ready to fulfill the routine requirements of his calling.
His answer and his attitude are instructive. Many of us are inclined to become restless with the requirements of life. We seek shortcuts. Some of the prerequisites of education, profession, family life, and citizenship seem petty and unnecessary. Perhaps sometimes they are. But it is important for us to bring ourselves under the disciplines of life. They usually have a purpose.
Perhaps Jesus especially wanted by this act to identify himself with us human beings. For him, baptism was not necessary for cleansing from sin, but it was an opportunity to declare himself part of our human race; in our needs, as well as in our potential glory.
I welcome the prospect of a baptism as I enter into this new year; and so, I hope, do you. I need a renewed sense of my baptism in water. I want to feel again the sense of cleansing; a freshness and a lovely purity.
But I want, also, a baptism of fire. I want to feel the grand expectation that God has invested glory in this year; not only in some general sense, but in a specific way, for you and for me. I don't want to limit God's purposes and possibilities in my life by a low expectation. Why should we settle for water when God's promise for you and for me is fire? Thanks be to God for high expectations, and for a Lord who waits graciously to fulfill them.
J. Ellsworth Kalas
