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 "IT'S A MIRACLE!" Isaiah 42:1-9; Matthew 3:13-17
It may surprise you to hear me say this, but it's probably not the first time I've surprised you. I don't know how to preach. Even after finishing my Doctor of Ministry degree that focused on preaching. I've only been trying to preach for the last twenty years, and after twenty years, I know less about how to preach a sermon than when I started.
What I've learned over the years is this: when it comes to sermons, people don't listen. Or, more accurately, people don't hear. There are too many things in the way of getting the word across: postmodern skepticism, scientific advances, Attention Deficit Disorder, flat-panel tv's and Ipods and cell phones, even our low-tech sinful nature.
Our professors in seminary used to tell us that you can count on spending an hour in preparation each week for every minute of your finished sermon. So in theory, I should be spending fifteen to twenty hours a week on each sermon! That's going on half the week. Needless to say, that doesn't always happen, but that doesn't mean that I don't work at it. Every week I do my homework. I pray, I read, I take notes, I come up with some ideas. Then I come up here and stand around for fifteen to twenty minutes, I tell some stories, I make some gestures - but you don't hear!
I don't know how to preach. I've tried everything. I've used first, second and third person. I've arranged the ideas differently. I've broken a fifteen-minute sermon down into five three-minute sermons. But how is it that you can ever REALLY talk to someone about God? How do you speak in such a way that people don't just hear ABOUT God, but are brought TO God? I have learned that, for a preacher, it is just about impossible to get people to GET a sermon.
But, sometimes, they do. People have been known to hear. Most of you keep coming back because there was that one time that lightning struck for you, and because it did, you think it could happen again, and you want to be here when it does. Once you got yourself to church, in spite of being sleepy, or distracted, or frazzled - there have been times that, without a doubt, you really heard.
But you know what annoys me? It's when I preach a sermon that I meant to be good but it isn't, a sermon that could have been a good sermon if I'd only had another month to work on it, one of those sermons - poorly illustrated, roughly thought out, boring through and through - that kind of sermon, and then after worship you come through the door, and you hug me and say, "Thank you! That was wonderful. That changed my life. I got it!"
Got what? I have the manuscript for that sermon. I have a doctorate in preaching, and I know a bad sermon when I hear one! So why, despite my worst efforts, did you end up hearing?
My late colleague Walter Crofton got to take a sabbatical from the ministry after serving our church in A lot of people go fishing on their sabbatical, or sleep in, or do something totally unrelated to the ministry. My friend Betty Meadows worked at a Waffle House during hers! Not Walter. Every Sunday for three months, he and his wife went to worship at at least one church. He decided to see how the other half lived. He saw it all: contemporary worship, traditional worship, heavy liturgical worship, worship with congregations of different ethnic backgrounds, large churches and small churches. When he came back, I asked him what he had learned from all those churches and all those sermons, and he said, "I think it's a miracle that anyone ever hears anything."
And yet, you do. It has to be a miracle.
Blaise Pascal was one of the greatest minds that ever lived. He was nothing if not curious. His razor-sharp intellect caused him to question everything and stay frustrated looking for answers. But one night, in the middle of the night, Pascal writes this: "Not the God of the philosophers, but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, fire! fire! fire!" Even someone with a mind like Pascal couldn't climb his way up to God on his own. So in the middle of the night, the living God enflamed him.
Look at today's gospel reading. It was just another day at the river. John was baptizing, washing people up, getting them ready for the Messiah. Back then, baptism wasn't how we think of it today. It was a ritual that Jews sometimes went through, to purify themselves for the coming of the Messiah.
"Messiah's coming," John preached. "Someday." John didn't say "Messiah's here!" He just said, "Messiah's coming." The people knew they were supposed to be expecting the Messiah from reading and studying the scripture. They had been waiting so long, though, that by this point both he and they were just going through the motions. But this time, John's preaching sounded a little different. People started to interrupt his sermon: "Are you the Messiah?" "No," he said, "I couldn't tie the shoelaces of the one you are expecting. I baptize with water," he said, "but the one who is coming after me, more powerful than me, will baptize with wind and fire. I just wash you up; he will burn you up!"
John's right. There's a load of difference between expecting the word of God and actually hearing it. There's a load of difference between anticipating the possibility of God and actually getting God.
So, John is going through the motions, doing the ceremonial baptizing like he was boxing up widgets. "Next." Wade in, stoop down, get up. "Next." Wade in, stoop down, get up. "Next." And then - along came this one from No more widgets. Dove, Spirit, Voice. Fire.
There are plenty of times throughout the gospels that Jesus talked in riddles. Jesus was known for telling parables that were hard to understand. But here, in this moment, at the first of the year, no riddles. There is a voice all the way from Heaven, and we see and hear God say to Jesus, "You are my Son. You're beloved." Clear as a bell. Can you believe it? It's a conversation within the heart of the Trinity, but we get to overhear it. It's a miracle!
Who knows how many people actually heard the voice that day? What a blessing for us that somebody heard it, somebody saw the dove and felt the fire, and then had the courage to tell us about it. Because maybe then, maybe even us, we who are so limited by skepticism, or postmodernness or whatever, maybe even we might be open to such a voice.
Presbyterians are among those who baptize babies. Why is that? A baby can't believe the Apostles' Creed, or think theologically, or follow the Ten Commandments. And so that means that a baby is totally, utterly dependent upon the grace of God to do for the baby what the baby can't do for herself. If this baby is going to get back to God, it will take a miracle.
And that's exactly the point. We baptize in promise and expectation that God will work in the child's life. We baptize anybody, any age, into that same promise. Everybody here requires a voice, a dove, a heavenly light beyond anything that we could ever create for ourselves, or we won't get home.
I can't preach God's Word to you. Forgive me when I try to talk you into the faith, because I can't. And it's not because I'm not such a great preacher. It's because revelation, when it's about God, is always a gift. It's always a miracle. It's got to come from heaven. I can't preach, and you can't hear, except as a miracle from God.
I'm not saying that the baptism of Jesus had to have happened exactly the way Matthew described it. I'm not saying that visions like this happen every day. What I AM saying is that it WILL happen to YOU!
One of these days, you'll taking a bath or taking a break, or listening to a sermon, or staring off into space doing nothing. And then, just when you though your little world was silent and safe, the heavens will open, you'll hear an unexplainable but undeniable voice, some big bird will swoop down and you will feel the wind. And in spite of your reservations, you will dare to wade into the water. You will draw near the fire.
Amen. -------------------------------------------------- A million thanks to William Willimon, who so often says it better than I ever can, and his exegetical work "Miraculous Baptism" in Pulpit Resource, Vol. 31 No., 1, Year A, January-March 2008, pages 9ff. |
