christianity

Sermon 12/17/2023 – The Start of the Kingdom

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

John 1:6-8,19-28

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.

This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed and did not deny it, but he confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” He said,

“I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ ” as the prophet Isaiah said.

Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, “Why, then, are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal.” This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

Sermon Text

As we have made our way through Advent, we have looked at the endings that Advent points to. There is an end to Pain in this world, even an end to the World as we know. However, Advent would not mean much if it was just a season of negation. We do not look forward to the End of all Things, but to the Rebirth of Creation. Advent is a season of looking forward to a new beginning, not a meditation on endings.

The Gospels all attest to the ministry of Jesus beginning with someone else baptizing on the banks of the Jordan. John the Baptist, a cousin of Jesus through Mary’s relative Elizabeth, took on a prophetic ministry on the banks of the Jordan. There he proclaimed that God’s Kingdom was coming soon, and that another would rise up to lead God’s people into this new world. To mark this coming kingdom, John began to use the muddy water of the Jordan. In being washed in that water, people received as special kind of grace – they made a statement of their faith, but more than that God met them on the banks of that river and affirmed their choice.

Baptism is a complicated ritual to trace to its beginning. Many faiths throughout history have included ritual washings in their practices. At some point, a form of baptism entered Judaism as a way for converts to join the faith, but this developed at some point in the first century.[1] Greek mystery religions also developed a practice of ritual washing to show a person being born into a new life in the protection of their patron deity.[2] Yet, on the whole, these rituals are seen as being contemporaneous with the Christian ritual of Baptism. More than that, the person who first preached about being washed in water as a singular statement of one’s intention to be born again, is almost always said to be John the Baptist.[3]

Baptism comes from the Greek word βαπτιζω (baptizo,) meaning “to dip,” “to immerse,” or “to drown.” From the beginning of the Church it was practiced primarily by two means – the first was full immersion in water, the second by the pouring of water over a person’s head or “affusion.” A final method, sprinkling, is not attested to in early documents of the Church, but carries equal validity in the development of the ritual throughout history. All methods of Baptism are equally valid, and all methods work to the same goal – initiating people into the new work that God is doing. It is a powerful sacrament, given to a person only once in their life, as a testament to God’s grace that brought them to faith.

When John began to baptize on the Jordan, he was changing how the world understood God’s grace forever. The call of Isaiah we discussed last week, to make a way in the wilderness for God was fulfilled in this ministry of repentance. The people called out to the banks of the Jordan were as different from one another as could be. Sinners and Saints both came to the water and asked to be washed clean. When Pharisees and Sadducees, enemies of one another and critics of John, came to the waters – even they were allowed to take part in this new movement of the Spirit. This was not a new start for only one kind of person, it was opened up for all people to take part in and to see God’s grace at work.

The Kingdom of God has always been expanding in its scope. What began only as a thing shared by two people, Adam and Eve in the beginning of time, became a covenant to all flesh under Noah. God’s redemptive mission to the broken creation was then focused in on Abraham and his descendants, and then through prophet after prophet, expanded to reclaim the diverse people who had been born from the expansion of humanity across the Earth. God’s Kingdom, it seems, was shaped like an hourglass. It became its most restrictive in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, and has since then been growing outward with great speed, reaching out into infinity.

The Start of the Kingdom of God could have been restricted to just a few people, the best of the best, but it was not. God opened the Kingdom to all people and was sure to make it clear again and again. Among the first to proclaim Jesus’s divinity were Priests from a distant land. The first person we are told was baptized by the Apostle’s was a native Judean, but an Ethiopian. Peter was told again and again that all things were being reconciled to God, and Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles proved this once and for all.

The start of earthly Kingdoms are almost always born out of violence and exclusion. An army forms and pushes the existing power structures out of the way for another to take their place. The Kingdom of God, in opposition to this pattern of the world, began with something far more powerful. God, seeking to redeem all things, called for all people to willingly join into the work God was beginning. Rather than excluding, God’s work asked even the most wicked people to change their ways and take part in the coming salvation of the world. Baptism, a gift of God, marked the moment that a person jumped into this new life – a life focused on God, on the good of others, and on the Kingdom that has no end.

Today, may all of us remember our Baptisms, and may those of us who have not been washed in the waters of baptism consider seriously taking that step. It is not a thing to be taken lightly, but it is a gift that begins a whole new world within our souls. Praise God for the gift of a new start, and for the waters that freely allows grace to pour over us all. – Amen.

[1] The Mishnah ‛Eduyyoth describes the disagreement between bet Hillel and bet Shammai about how to handle proselytes; how long one is to fast before immersion and circumcision, how much water to be used, etc.

[2] Ferguson. “Washings for Purification in Greco-Roman Paganism” in Baptism in the Early Church. Location 1045

[3] Kaufmann Kohler & Samuel Krauss“Baptism” in The Jewish Encyclopedia ed. Isidore Singer. (London: Funk & Wagnalls 1916) accessed by: http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/2456-baptism

Sermon 11/05/2023 – A Glimpse of Heaven

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

The light of Heaven bursts out all around us. Hard as it can be to see it, there are remnants of it in every drop of atmosphere and every word which we utter in love to one another. It might seem quaint, even trite, to say that the everyday things around us carry such divine revelations, but I don’t mind being either of those things if it means I am telling the truth. We began this morning with one of my favorite songs, “Morning has Broken,” and while that hymn is most famous for Yusuf Islam’s version, I know it from a little show called Pushing Daisies. In that show, the aunt of one of the characters sings the song when something changes within them, the long pent up fears about life melt away, and in the light of a new day that are reborn to go out and pursue what they have long written off as impossible.

Heaven, the realm in which God resides, is something we have talked about a lot this year. Visions of Heaven and what Heaven is actually like and the universal desire of people to know about Heaven… These topics keep coming up to me and out from this pulpit. We are people who are always wondering, always seeking, and so it is no great wonder that our eventual place of residence is a major concern to us. Yet, even our understanding of Heaven as it is is incomplete, because we are not yet in a place where Heaven has taken its final form.

Our scripture asserts that someday we will all be gathered together with a great crowd of people, too numerous to count. There we will join together in praising God before the Heavenly throne. The people there will speak all languages, worship in all styles, have a lifetime’s worth of customs and ideas that all coalesce before that majestic throne. The great enormity of the people of God becomes clear, the distinctions we make between ourselves fall apart, and all at once there is a great display of God’s grace made manifest – the body of Christ, gathered together once and for all.

Yet, this vision is not of the final home for the blessed. No, this is still before the world has been reborn later in the text of Revelation. We are still in the current heaven and the current earth. There is something better still in the works. God will take a great wrecking ball to the metaphysical walls of existence. Heaven will come crashing into Earth and Earth will come crashing into Heaven. There will be a great rushing of reality, like when a dam is suddenly opened and water spills through it. There will no longer be rails and screen keeping what is sacred from what is holy, not in any part of this world, for all will be sacred once again.

The celebration of All Saints’ Day is an ancient feature of the Church. It has not always sat on November 1st, nor has it universally been practiced for one day alone. Yet, from the moment that the people of God saw those around them passing from this life into death, from eternity into eternity, they began to take intentional time to remember their legacy. In South America this merged with local customs to become Dia de los Muertos, a celebration of the deceased through memorial offerings. In the United Kingdom, various traditions came together to form what we now call Halloween, again an acknowledgement of the veil between life and death thinning, and intention moments were set aside to remember those we dearly miss.

This year, we gather to celebrate during a time of great unrest in the world. Ongoing conflicts continue to take lives of innocent people. The Israel-Hamas war has claimed the lives of over 8,000 Palestinians and nearly 2,000 Israelis. The Ukraine War has seen an estimated 10,000 civilians killed in the conflict. In our own nation, the innocent suffer from shooting and from poverty, from preventable diseases and so many other terrible truths of this world. We are in a world that is far from Heaven, and yet we as people of faith assert that Heaven is reaching out to us. There are footholds in this world where God has made the mundane Divine, and we must enhance their efficacy whenever we can.

We are all, as people of faith, Temples to God. The Holy Spirit rests within you, testifying to God and to your own Soul the truth of the Gospel. That truth is a comfort in times of trouble, not because we are promised any of it will suddenly disappear, but because we are told it has its end. This present world, the order of things that always ends in tragedy and pain, it will not stand forever. God is at work, God is pushing back against the overwhelming darkness, and it will someday be conquered. We are a people who trust that Christ is not done with the world, as often and as easy as it is to write it off as long gone. There is still hope, a light still burns in the darkness and the darkness has not, cannot, and will not overcome it.

Today is a day of remembrance. We will name the people we know and who we miss. Let us also turn our hearts to those who are in mourning that we do not know. There are people across this world who are hurting today. Some the pain is new, others long and drawn out. Yet, for all of us there is hope. There is a God who brings about resurrection and redemption. Death is not the end for those who believe, nor is the world to come something to be afraid of. There is, in this life, a dim feeling of hope that permeates all things – that in the hereafter becomes a blazing light that no one can deny.

Today when we take communion, drink deeply from your cup, because it is a reminder of what Christ has done to make this hope possible. When you take the bread in your hand, remember that you hold a piece of the Body of Christ – not just in that mouthful but in your entire being. When we take the two together, we will do so with all who believe, across space and time, and we will assert proudly that there is hope in this dim and dismal world. Let us love, let us hope, let us pray, so that everyone who sees us gets a glimpse of Heaven. More than that, let the someone who needs to be reminded, be you. Let God renew your heart, that you may be made secure against all the torrents of sadness that define our world. – Amen.