Third Sunday after the
Epiphany
January 22, 2012
It is because she is Barry’s parent but not Sam’s. Sam was over at
Barry’s house to play when they both got into trouble. Mrs. Smith is not hoping
that Barry will be grounded, she is actually bringing the punishment about by speaking
it to her son. With Sam, however, she has no authority in this regard. It is
his own parents who have the authority to ground him.
At the same time, if after they got into their trouble, Mrs. Smith said
to them, “Neither of you are going to get a snack this afternoon,” both of them
are going to go hungry until dinner time. Because Sam is in her home she does
have a degree of authority over him and therefore her speaking of the words of them
getting no snack actually brings about that state of affairs for both children.
These two illustrations teach us a lot about words; perhaps something
we don’t think about enough. Words obviously tell us things. “It’s raining,”
tells us something. It tells us that it’s raining. But if it’s not raining,
saying, “It’s raining,” doesn’t make it so. Words tells us things but don’t
always bring into effect what they say. However, words don’t only tell us
things they also do indeed bring things about. And this is probably what we
don’t think about enough.
When Mrs. Smith tells her son he’s grounded, those aren’t just words
stating a fact. They bring about the fact. But when she doesn’t have the
authority to enact such a discipline, such as on her son’s friend, her words
aren’t performative; they don’t bring about what they say. She might say, “If
you were my son, I’d ground you.” But she can’t actually ground him because she
is not in the proper position to do so. Obviously
people attempt all the time to do things they don’t have the authority to do.
There are certain things recognized as authoritative and actual and that’s what
we’re talking about. As a member of a jury I can stand up, walk over to the
witness stand, and swear in the next witness, but my speaking of it hasn’t
accomplished it. The bailiff saying the same words, has. That’s because he is
speaking not simply words, but words in the context of his having authority to
do so. When he swears in the witness, the witness is actually sworn in.
What this has to do with you is that you are the recipient of certain words
that are spoken. How will you hear those words? These aren’t just any words.
They are the words of God. They are words that don’t simply tell you things.
They are words that bring about what they say. They are words spoken in the
context of one having the authority to say them and under the God who has the
power to bring about what the words state. How will you respond to these words?
Will you hear what they actually say and believe what they actually accomplish?
Will you take God at His word and believe that the words are what He says they
are and that they accomplish what He says they accomplish?
Or will you continue to listen to them as the words of men? Will you
hear them for what you want to hear them as? Will you go to the pages of
Scripture and see there another example of what we human beings need to do for
a God who needs us to do things for Him? Will you place your focus, as is your
natural inclination, on what you must do, because, after all, God’s words to
you are just the starting point. There is a life to be lived by you and it must
be filled with what you must do, how you must obey more, that you must be more
faithful in your walk with the Lord, that you must turn things around in your
life because you're getting sloppy in your spiritual life, or that you just
must plain love God more than you do. Conversely, will you take hold of that
insidious temptation your sinful nature holds up and hear all of this as a
freedom from living godly, reverent, moral, serving lives?
Either way you go you are not really hearing the words of God. If the
Bible is nothing more than, “Hey, folks, I created you, you know. And it sure
would be nice if you would do what I say. If you’d live the kind of life I
command you to live,” then there is nothing more to the Bible than any other
religious book. If Christianity is nothing else than God telling us what to do
and us obediently following then there is no difference between that and any
other religion. That may sound like a simplistic way of describing it, but
listen to how people talk about God. Listen to how they talk about their
spiritual walk with Christ. If you really listen you will be amazed at how
man-centered it is. You see more and more that mostly what people are talking about
is themselves and what they must to, what they must be, how they must act.
If you’re honest with yourself, you will come to the conclusion that
you place things like these as where the rubber hits the road rather than the
work of your Lord in your Baptism, or in the proclamation of the Gospel, or in
the Lord’s Supper. If you take stock of what you believe in your heart of
hearts you will find yourself looking to yourself rather than hearing the words
of your Lord and actually believing that they actually bring about what they
say.
Christians, the ones who are to be telling the unbelieving world the
Good News, the Gospel, the message of grace, the message that Christ has
accomplished salvation, so often spread a message of the Law. Too often Christians
make known a message of what people must do in order to be saved. This is
exactly the opposite of the Gospel. You hear it all the time. You must repent.
You must believe. You must have faith. You must be faithful. You must obey. You
must do what God commands. You must turn your life over to Christ. You must
respond to God’s invitation. You must accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior.
It’s a trap that is so easy to fall into. Actually, it’s not. We’re
trapped in it from birth. We are simply content with staying trapped in this
twisted way of thinking. If only we try to do better that will be good and God
will be pleased with that. Therefore, He will be pleased with us.
Listen to the words of the Lord in today’s three Scripture readings. He
is not. He is not pleased with you as you are. He loves you. But He condemns
you to hell for your inborn sin. That is where you’re at when you content
yourself with your insistence on what you must do and denigrating what God says
and countering what it actually brings about.
Listen to the message in the three readings today. Repent. God’s word
to you is “Repent.” This is His message to you of the Law. The Law is what
shatters. The Law is what breaks apart. It is what beats down. It tears down
and hammers away. It is relentless. It is insistent that you are not the
solution, you are not the answer, you are not the key. You are in the mess
you’re in because of you. This is the work of the Law. It works hard upon you
because you work hard to build yourself up. You expend a lot of energy focusing
on who you are, what you need, what you must do, what you’d like to see God
doing in your life, what would be better if He’d just change a thing or two,
especially in those other people.
God doesn’t do anything with this. He shatters it. Repent. This is His
work. It is His word. It is a word that doesn’t just tell you something. It
accomplishes something. It brings about what it says. Your repentance is the
work of God. It is brought about in you by God’s speaking it to you. It’s so
powerful that He doesn’t use some holy man to speak it to you. As evidence I
present to you Jonah. Yeah, he was a prophet. But if you go farther into the
book, after what we have in today’s Old Testament reading, you’ll see that
Jonah was not doing his work of proclaiming because his heart was in it. He
wasn’t sharing God’s word with the Ninevites because he loved them and wanted
them to be saved. No, Jonah, how can we put this delicately, wanted the
opposite. He knew that God is merciful. He knew that God wants everyone to be
saved. And he knew something else. He knew that God’s word isn’t just words.
It’s not plain information. He knew that it brings about what it says. It
accomplishes. Jonah was hopppin’ mad that God did not wipe Nineveh off the face
of the earth. But God used that proclamation of His word from the mouth of a
seriously troubled prophet to bring about what those words said: repentance.
You and I both know those Ninevites were pagans. We know that they very
possibly may have gone back to their old ways long after Jonah made his journey
back home. But these things God hasn’t given us to know. The repentance of the
Ninevites is. The word of God spoken by a reluctant prophet brought it about.
God brought it about.
The same thing is happening in the Epistle reading. Paul is speaking of
things that are. This world is passing away. Christ will return imminently. The
words of Christ Himself said this. Paul simply repeats it here. Do you believe
this? Do you take it to heart? It is so. It is so because God has said it is so
but because you don’t take Him at His word you get caught up in the anxieties
of life. You take the good things God gives you in life and you put them at the
forefront. You think Christ’s return is a long way off. That it won’t be in your
lifetime. You think that this world is just a holding room for the real deal
which is in heaven. You think these things because your focus is not on Christ
but on yourself.
How? You turn the good things God gives you into things you must do or
not do. You become caught up in them so that you lose sight of God’s gracious
love and care for you in this life as well as for eternity. You are anxious
about many things because you are consumed with what you think you need rather
than resting in what God gives you. You are wrapped up in the cares of this
world instead of in the grace and care of God.
It’s tough to hear the word of God. Who wants to sit there and listen
to God telling you to repent? Who wants to be told that they’re problem? But
there’s good news here. If you listen to His word you will hear it. If you take
it to heart you will see that His message to you is one of Good News. Of grace,
of mercy, of love, of forgiveness. He calls you to repentance because He loves
you. He swings His hammer down on you in order to destroy you. That’s good
news, my friend. It means He is the one who is going to accomplish in you
everything you know you should do. It means having brought to nothing all your
good intentions and even all the things you have done He will accomplish in you
something new and something great.
Did you hear Jesus’ words? The Kingdom of God is at hand. It has become
present in your life in the Person of Jesus. He is the Kingdom of God in the
flesh. There’s a person here today who knows this every bit as much as you do
even though if you talk to him he’ll either make some sort of gurgling sounds
or maybe cry because you’re not his mommy. Little William heard something
today. It was the very same thing you heard. He heard the word of his Lord. The
word of his Lord didn’t just give little William some cool new info that will
be useful to him at some point when he’s old enough to understand and his mom
and dad explain it all to him. What William heard was what he heard in the same
way you and I have heard it. The word of Christ. God in His Son bringing about
what God in His Son said. New life. Forgiveness of sins.
This is what God has done for William in Baptism and for you. When the
words are spoken, “I Baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit,” those words are not just information, they bring about what they say.
You are Baptized. You are chosen by God. You have eternal life. His Word has
made it so. Amen.
SDG
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