The notion of an “end times” and “last days” is the cause of much anxiety, even among believers. Remember Harold Camping a couple of years ago, predicting the end of the world several times? It made the network news, and admit it, it probably caused you to wonder too, didn’t it? Hal Lindsey has made a cottage industry out of being wrong as his “Late, Great Planet Earth” goes into revision after revision. Only in the religion business can you make money by being wrong. People are alternately terrified and mesmerized by the eschatological and the apocalyptic. There are video games built around end times themes.
Who are you? That’s the question posed to John by the delegation from Jerusalem, the religious priests and Levites who were sent to investigate this strange wilderness man. Who are you? Or perhaps the question is more aptly put, “Who do you think you are? Calling people to repentance. Baptizing all sorts of filthy sinners - prostitutes and tax agents and riff raff - as if they could take a bath and all would be forgiven. Who are you? Dressed in camel’s hair, eating locusts and wild honey. Calling us a ‘brood of vipers’ and daring to call good, respectable religious people to repentance. Who do you think you are, John?”
Advent Vespers 2
12/10/2014
2 Peter 3:13-14
2Pet. 3:13 But according to his promise we wait for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
2Pet. 3:14 Therefore, beloved, since you wait for these, be zealous to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace.
We are time-bound creatures. Time enslaved at times. We are creatures of the clock, chasing the clock through the day and into the night, always asking “What time is it?” anxiously wondering if we have enough time. Our lives are governed by time. We wake up at a certain time of day and go to sleep at a certain time. There are fixed times for meals, for a bath or shower, for most of the things we do in life. It seems we never have enough time.
You know it’s Advent when John the Baptist appears on the scene. “Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.” John is our Advent preacher, calling to us from the wilderness, calling us to the water of Baptism, pointing with that long, bony finger to Christ saying, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” That’s all John is good for. That’s all he is there for. Preparing a royal highway of repentance. He is God’s bulldozer, leveling the high places and filling in the low ones, making the uneven ground level and the rough places plain.
1Cor. 1:3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
1Cor. 1:4 I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, 5 that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge— 6 even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you— 7 so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 8 who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Advent. Wow! Thanksgiving dinner is barely digested and it’s Advent this year. What happened? A late Thanksgiving conspired with a mid-week Christmas to bring an early start to the season of Advent, smack on November 30th, the feast of St. Andrew. Not quite on a day and…
We like looking back, but looking backward is no way to run a race. When I was in high school, I looked back over my shoulder for a pass playing touch football and crashed headlong into a concrete light pole. That backward glance earned me twenty stitches and four days in the hospital with a very big headache. When you run a race, you look forward. You press forward toward the mark, the prize, the finish line.
Sin is leprosy of the soul, a spiritual leprosy. It is a deep contamination, a systemic corruption of our humanity that affects everything we think, do, or say. It renders us unclean before God. It isolates and divides us from our fellow man. It flares and spreads like wildfire, a latent and lurking disease, a spiritual retrovirus that can lie dormant and then flare up in an instant when brought in contact with the Law. The Law amplifies Sin. It doesn’t cure it. It amplifies it, causing Sin to be utterly sinful beyond measure.
Today is the last installment in our series from Paul’s letter to the Romans. Romans goes on for one more chapter in which Paul gets down to the business of asking them for missionary money to go to Spain. And then there’s an appended letter of commendation for a woman named Phoebe who is carrying the letter to the Roman congregation along with a bunch of greetings to various people. Sufficient unto today is Romans chapter 12 and the matter of things that don’t really matter.
This sermon from 2008 inserted here to complete the lectio continua through Romans 6 to 14.
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God. (Romans 13:1)
We are talking about “life as liturgy”, today from Romans chapter 13. Your life is a priestly liturgy as you, a baptized priest to God offer your own body as a living sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to God, a holy and acceptable sacrifice to God by His mercies in Christ Jesus. This “life as liturgy” begins in the congregation, where your Baptism is located, where the Lord’s table of His Body and Blood are, where the Word is preached into your ears. It extends out from the congregation in love - sincere love that hates what is evil, that honors the other over one’s self, that never lacks in zeal, that is joyful in hope, patient in suffering, faithful in prayer, generous in hospitality.