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Text: Isaiah
42:1-7 (Luke The Only Son from Heaven In the name of him who baptized us with
the Holy Spirit and with fire, dear friends in Christ: It’s a rather frightful portrait of Jesus’
soon-to-be-inaugurated ministry that John the Baptizer paints in this morning’s
Gospel reading. He describes Jesus as
coming with a winnowing fork is in his hand – a tool used to toss the threshed
and flailed kernels of grain into the air to separate the good wheat from the useless
chaff. It’s a picture of the coming judgment
and how the Lord will separate the saints from the sinners on the Last Day. At that time he will divide the faithful
saved from the unbelieving damned; taking the former to be with him forever in Interestingly enough, there is a sense in which we as
followers of the Lord Jesus are called to get involved in this business of separating
wheat from chaff, and that’s in the field of truth and ideas. I mean there is God’s truth on one side, and
Satan’s lies on the other. We know
that. And we know that the two are poles
apart. The difference is literally light
and dark – or life and death. But
in between there are a lot of statements and thoughts
and ideas that contain elements of both.
And when we are confronted by them, we are called to be discerning: to divide out and keep what’s good and true,
and to exclude and throw away what’s bad and useless. In this sense it is incumbent on all of us to
be constantly separating wheat from chaff; though I need to add that saying so
in our pluralistic culture is not at all popular. No, today we are told that all ideas –
especially ideas that pertain to God and religion and morality – are equally
valid: “Who’s to say what’s right and
what’s wrong about such things? After
all, aren’t we all just guessing? Who
really knows what is wheat and what is chaff? Besides, isn’t sincerity all that really matters? Does it make any difference what someone
believes about God and all that other stuff so long as he or she is truly
following their heart and whatever it is they believe helps them to live a
better life?” We hear questions like
that all the time. And to them we
respond, “Yes, it makes a huge difference what someone believes; both in here
time and most especially in eternity.” With the Scriptures we maintain that Christ and faith in
him alone is the only legitimate path to God and to eternal life, and that all
other expressions of religion and spirituality are but pious illusions that
lead to damnation. There is a lot about
our faith that people are opposed to; but it’s this claim of exclusivity
that they find most offensive. This was
brought into clear focus again just recently.
In the week before Christmas there was a Barbara Walters special on TV
that went two evenings in a row (maybe some of you saw it). She was asking the questions, “Is there a
heaven? And if so, how do you get
there?” These are the big questions that every person must deal with and that
every religion attempts to answer. And
so what Walters did was to go around and ask rabbis, priests, and pastors of
various religions what they thought about it.
She even spoke to the Dali Lama who is Buddhist and to a would-be Muslim
suicide bomber who failed in his attempt to get his seventy-two virgins as a
reward for blowing himself up along with a lot of innocent civilians, and who is
now rotting in an Israeli jail. Now, I didn’t see the broadcast (it was brought to my
attention by a sharp eyed member); but I have since read the transcripts and
gone over many follow up interviews and what not, so I do know something about
it. Anyway, it happens that Walters has
no religious affiliation whatsoever. She
wasn’t raised in any faith and doesn’t see any need for it in her own
life. In her mind, that makes her
reporting about what others believe completely objective; but I’m sure you see
her mistake. She’s not truly neutral on
the questions she was asking like she imagines.
Instead by seeing no need for any of it, she started with the assumption
that none of the answers she got could possibly matter. They would all be equally unimportant. Not surprisingly, that’s where her report
ended up. “Is there a heaven? Maybe, but who knows? How do you get there if there is one? No one can say for sure; but there are lots
of good options. The only real villains are
people who insist that they know and who say that their way is the only way.” So I guess we’re villains for
believing what we do. But it may be of
some comfort to us that this conflict between those who believe God’s Word and
those who want to believe that there are many paths up the mountain to God (if
indeed there is either a God or a mountain) is nothing new. It’s been that way ever since the fall into
sin. Already in the early chapters of
Genesis, we see the conflict coming to one of its many heads in the historical
account of Noah. You know the
story: how it happened that everyone was
doing pretty much as they pleased, believing what they wanted to believe, and
living according to the dictates of their own hearts; and how the Lord God was
so appalled at the behavior of humankind and their rejection of his truth that
he determined to withdraw his Holy Spirit from them and wipe them all out. … All except for Noah
and his immediate family. Noah
received God’s grace and believed him when he said there was a flood
coming. Accordingly, he acted in faith
and built the ark as he had been directed.
In it, he and his family were safe from the destruction that enveloped
the whole earth. And I want you to know
that there were many other people in the world at that time who
were very sincere about their own beliefs and ideas – and every one of them
drowned. Only the small handful who trusted in God’s exclusive plan of salvation exactly the
way he revealed it lived. You may remember that toward the end of his ordeal, Noah
released a dove to act as his scout. It
flew around looking for a place to land, but there was nowhere for to it to set
its foot. Outside the ark there was only
death and destruction over the whole earth.
The only safe place in the world, the only place there was life, was on
the ark. It was the sole conveyer of
salvation from the flood. Some time later, Noah released the dove again. This time it returned to him with a green
sprig plucked from an olive seedling. It
was a sure sign that life was returning to the earth—but more than that, in the ancient world extending an olive branch was a
sign of peace and friendship.
Approaching your enemy with an olive branch meant that the conflict had
ended; the war was over. By having the
dove bring back the end of an olive branch, God was saying to Noah, “It’s over. My anger
has been placated and my judgment against man’s sin has been satisfied.” And the Lord put a rainbow in the sky as a
sign of his covenant of love, with a promise never again to use water to
destroy the whole earth. A few weeks later Noah released the
dove a third time and it flew away and never returned to him. And that’s something to bear in mind as today
we see in the Gospel reading a dove coming from heaven and lighting on
Jesus. This dove, we know, was a visible
manifestation of God’s Holy Spirit—the same Spirit that God had withdrawn from
the earth in the days of Noah. And here
we have Jesus, standing out in the water like … well, like the ark did. This is not a coincidence. There’s a message here: it’s that in this whole wide world awash in
sin and death, where everyone is out doing exactly what they please and
believing what they want to believe, the only place for God’s Spirit to land is
on Jesus. By virtue of his sinless
perfection, only he is a fit vessel for the Spirit of God to dwell. Only in him is life and salvation. This really is what Christian baptism is all about. The Scriptures say that we are baptized
into Christ. What we are doing in
baptism is getting aboard the To confirm it, as Jesus is coming up out of the water we
hear the voice of the Father announcing his covenant of love: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I
am well pleased.” Obviously these words
of the Father are directed first to Jesus; but what I want you to see is that
they are also directed to everyone who is “in him”; that is, those who are
baptized into him. That’s why Jesus was
baptized. You recall that John called
people to repentance and baptized them for the forgiveness of sin. Jesus didn’t need to repent. He had no sins to be forgiven. His Baptism wasn’t for himself; it was for
you—just as the sins he later died for were not his own, they were yours. So likewise, the words of the Father directed
to him are for your benefit. First so
that you will know that this is the Father’s only Son from heaven—the one
conveyer of salvation for humankind; and secondly, so that being in him, you
too will hear your Father’s approval. In
your baptism, the Father says to you, “You are my son, whom I love; with you
I am well pleased.” The Father’s declaration is prophetically expanded in
today’s Old Testament reading. Looking
ahead seven centuries, he anticipates the Baptism of Jesus and puts in the
mouth of Isaiah the prophet his commission to his Son. We’re not given any room to come up with
alternative methods for finding salvation when he emphatically states, “Here
is my servant, of whom I take hold, my chosen one in whom I
delight. I will put my Spirit on him
and he will bring justice to the nations.” Again, he impresses upon us the exclusivity
of salvation through Jesus when he says, “I will keep you and make you
to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles.” A covenant is sort of like a contract between
God and men. The old covenant was the
law, and it applied to everyone. It said
if you obeyed the law in every detail, you would be saved. That didn’t do us much good, because no
person ever held up his end of the bargain. In appointing his Son to be a covenant for the
people, God is saying to him, “You are the new contract that applies to
everyone.” And the wonderful thing about this contract is that is
completely one-sided. It doesn’t depend
on what we do; it depends on what the Son of God does for us. He is the one who is called in righteousness
because he is the only one who is righteous, and he’s given the task of
bringing God’s justice to the world. Not
that he’s going to destroy sinners as they richly deserve—that would be one way
to bring justice—but rather, again like the ark of Noah, he’ll do it by bearing
sinners inside him, and taking the brunt of God’s wrath against them on
himself. This is God’s only plan to save us; but up to this
point, I’ve been stressing the exclusivity of the Christian faith. We need to look at this a different way. It’s true that there is no salvation outside
of Christ; but what is really being stressed throughout the Scriptures is the
absolute in-clusivity of salvation in
Jesus. In the ark, only eight people
were saved. With all the animals and
all, there really wasn’t room or provision for any more. But in Christ, the door is open to
everyone. No one need be excluded. In fact, when all is said and done, it is just about
every other faith other than Christianity that’s exclusive. The reason for this is that all of them
ultimately depend on what you do to achieve salvation for
yourself. Every approach to heaven that’s
based on human effort is naturally going to favor people who are more gifted,
or sensitive, or “spiritual”, or have more of whatever it takes to get there
than those who don’t. And even then, all
such approaches to heaven leave a person in doubt. Because attaining the goal depends on what
you do – and because you’re fallen sinner who makes a lot of mistakes – you can
never know if you’ve done enough. But no
one is excluded from the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the complete assurance of
salvation he brings. No one is left out because
of age, race, gender, education, and above all not because of ability—because
with respect to the things of God, our faith tells us that none of us has any
ability. This is emphasized in the passage from Isaiah that
describes us as broken reeds and smoldering wicks: that is, pretty much useless. But it goes on to say that it is people like
that whom Jesus has come to save. As
weak and pathetic as we are, we won’t be broken off or snuffed out by him. Later in the text, all people are further
described as blind prisoners in a dark dungeon—completely lost and helpless,
and under the power of the devil. It
says he’s come to give everyone sight and to set them free. And because he is the only Son from heaven, only he can
do it. How? First, by taking on our human flesh, becoming
the child of Mary, and living a sinless life.
Second, by coming to the And no, that’s not considered a nice, culturally
sensitive thing to believe by those who are, as yet, blind prisoners in the
devil’s dark dungeon. But they need not
remain in that hopeless condition; and we can be part of setting them
free. Again, because we are in Christ,
the words directed to him are also directed to us. Look again at the passage from Isaiah and
understand that since you are in Christ, the Lord is speaking to you. God has chosen you to be his servant. He’s placed his Spirit on you. He’s promised to uphold you and keep you from
discouragement. And in so doing, he’s
charged you convey his justice to people by telling them the good news of what
Jesus has done for us all. This is the main message of Epiphany: that God in his grace has sent only one
Savior for all people – his only Son from Heaven; and he wants everyone
to know it. May he give us the grace to
believe it, and to be part of his plan to spread the good news. In Jesus’ name. Amen. Soli Deo Gloria! |
