Sermon manuscript:
I’m a little frightened to do what I’m about to do. I’m
going to put the scenario in our Gospel reading into a hypothetical,
contemporary situation. I’m afraid that you’re not going to like it, because
Jesus thinks and speaks differently than we do. But I’m going to do it anyway,
because what’s the point of being a Christian if you don’t listen to Christ? So
here goes.
Did you hear what Vladimir Putin did the other day? He had
his soldiers waiting in ambush at a Ukrainian church. There were some old
ladies who made their way into church to pray. So Putin had their tongues cut
out and hung on the altar.
Let me be clear, this is not what Vladimir Putin did. I made
it up. But it is actually mild compared to what some people told Jesus in our
Gospel reading today. They gave a news report: Pilate killed some Galileans
(Galilee is where Jesus and the apostles were from). Pilate the pagan, Roman
governor killed them in church. They were making sacrifices. The blood of these
men ended up being mixed with the blood of the animals that they were
sacrificing. They didn’t just have their tongues cut out, like in my
hypothetical story. They were killed.
Now if you had heard my fake story about Vladimir Putin and
believed it to be true, what would you be thinking about? Especially if you
personally knew the victims, like perhaps Jesus and the apostles knew the
victims under Pilate, what would you being thinking about? You’d be thinking:
What a monster! How cruel! Shame on him! How can we get pay-back? How can he
cut people’s tongues out? Your thoughts would paint him black as coal with horn
and fangs.
If your thoughts turned to the victims you’d probably paint
them as white as doves. Those poor old ladies—how scared they must have been!
Those poor Galileans—just trying to go to church in Jerusalem.
The people in Bible times were made of the same flesh and
blood that we have. Those people who turned on the news for Jesus, letting him
know about the dastardly deeds of Pilate, were expecting Jesus to be outraged
at that pagan, Pontius Pilate, and feel sorry for those victims. Where did
Jesus send their thoughts? Not where you’d expect. First he sent their thoughts
to whether the victims deserved it or not. Then he had them examine themselves.
He said, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse
sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered these things? I tell
you, no. But unless you repent, you will all perish too.”
Again, I don’t want to do this, but let me put it into my
fake scenario: “Do you think those old Ukrainian women were worse sinners than
the rest of the Ukrainians? I tell you, no. But unless you repent, you will
have your tongues cut out too.”
I am not going to waste my breath trying to make what Jesus
says here palatable to unbelievers. Unbelievers will think he is monstrous.
There were plenty of people who didn’t like Jesus back then too. The flesh and
blood that they had is the same flesh and blood that we have. Those who hate
Jesus cannot learn anything from him. And Jesus is teaching something. What is
he teaching?
First of all, Jesus is taking away two forms of
justification that we find palatable and handy. We figure that a person is
justified either by shifting the blame to someone else—where they are the bad
ones, or we figure we are justified if we have gone through a nasty bit of
suffering. You can use one of the other, but we like it best when we have a
combination of both. Let me explain each of these justifications.
We figure that we are justified if someone else is nastier
than us. We are always on the lookout for someone nastier than us. I think this
is why we like gossip so much. It’s why we like hearing about dastardly deeds
of others. If other people are horrible, then we don’t look so bad in
comparison.
Note that this is what happens with God’s questioning in the
Garden. Adam blames Eve and says to God. “If it wasn’t for the woman that you,
God, put here with me, I never would have eaten.” Eve blames the serpent. The
serpent’s a lot worse than she is. But they are not thereby justified. Each of
us is responsible for his or her sins. Pointing to someone nastier than us
doesn’t make those sins go away.
We also want to justify ourselves by the suffering that we
have gone through. We had a rough childhood. We’ve been mistreated by this
person and that person and the other person. Our tongues were cut out. Our
blood was splashed on the sacrifices. Surely someone who has had a miserable
life has to have a better one in the next! Justice demands it. Whoever doesn’t
think so must be a monster.
The fact is our suffering never atones for a single sin. Our
suffering isn’t at all redeeming. If anything it is nothing other than what we
simply deserve. “I, a poor, miserable sinner, deserve present and eternal
punishment.”
Even unbelievers should be able to see that our suffering
isn’t that noble or commendable. We immediately resent the suffering as soon as
it comes upon us. We hardly ever are cheerful while we are going through it. We
look for someone to blame for what we have suffered—it’s the doctor’s fault;
it’s the tobacco company’s fault.
Probably the worst thing that we do with our suffering is we
use it as an excuse to do bad things. I had a rough life, so I’m entitled to
drown my sorrows. I was treated like garbage by my parents, so I can treat my
children like garbage. My spouse hurt me, so I’m entitled to hurt right back.
I mentioned that we like it best when we can use both of
these things to justify ourselves. We like it when there’s some villain out
there. We figure we can never be tossed into the same basket as a Hitler or a
Stalin. We’re not that bad. Look at their sins, not my sins. If we do have to
look at me, then look how sad we are. Poor, poor me! Look what I’ve gone
through! Everybody should feel so sorry for me.
The reason why Jesus sounds like such a jerk is that he cuts
straight through these justifications that we like to rely upon. They’re no
good, though. You will never be justified by the badness of other people. You
will never be justified by your sad story. You are responsible to God for your
life. God is not swayed by popular opinion. He does not accept these
justifications as being valid. This is what Jesus points out with his words.
Jesus says, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse
sinners than all the other Galileans?” Jesus brings to mind that the
victims of this crime were sinners. That’s a big no-no. Very insensitive. Then
he says that they were just like everybody else. They weren’t worse sinners. Oh
good. Notice what he is doing there. He is tossing everyone into the same
basket. He’s tossing you into the same basket as the Hitlers and the Stalins.
Then he says, “Unless you all repent, you likewise will perish.”
Here we had all been enjoying ourselves, listening to the
news, appalled at the villains and having oh-so-tender of a heart for the
victims, (we really do have a heart of gold, you know,) and then Jesus has to
come along and ruin it! He very rudely redirects our attention away from others
onto ourselves: “Unless you repent, you likewise will perish!”
It is the easiest thing in the world for us to go through
life without giving a second thought to our own responsibility. We can live our
entire life feeling sorry for ourselves. We can blame this person and that
person. We alternate between the thoughts, “Shame on them!” and “Poor, poor
me.” If there is anything wrong with me, then it must be somebody else’s fault.
If there is anything wrong with me, surely it can’t be as bad as what others
have done. We love this stuff. You know why? Because it excuses us and gives us
license to live however we might want—within bounds of course. We can’t go
cutting old ladies’ tongues out or anything.
But, you know what? Sometimes those who do such awful things
end up getting ahead. Maybe there are more Christians in prisons who have done
horrible things than there are in some of our congregations. (Assuming there
are preachers of the Gospel in those places.) You know why? Because some of
them have had their favorite justifications taken away. They don’t play the
stupid games that the rest of us do. They can’t pretend that they are not evil.
That is to say, they repent. They know that it is their own fault. That is
something that is extremely rare.
Wide is the gate and easy is the way that leads to
destruction. Narrow is the gate and hard is the way that leads to eternal life.
There is nothing more common in this world than for people to justify themselves.
While they justify themselves they feel entitled to do whatever they
please—again, within reason, of course. There is hardly anything rarer than
those who confess they are without excuse. They have no justification. “God,
be merciful to me, a sinner.” That is the hard way that leads to eternal
life, because we have to admit that God is right when he judges me. Of course
God is also right when he says that he justifies me in Jesus Christ.
Jesus’s words are always going to sound impolite. He is
taking away the ways that we prefer to deal with life. We prefer to live our
life in such a way where we don’t really have to think about God. It goes
without saying, then, that we don’t want to think of God being involved in our
life in such a way where he would cause a tower to fall on us. We prefer our
own justifications of ourselves to God’s justification of us in Jesus Christ.
With our own justifications of ourselves we believe that we are sitting in the
driver’s seat of our lives. We retain our dignity by looking down on others.
Whatever is wrong is mostly somebody else’s fault.
What’s wrong is not Putin’s fault, it’s not the Ukrainians’
fault, it’s not Biden’s fault, it’s not Trump’s fault, it’s not the Democrats’
fault, it’s not the Republicans’ fault. Our nation is filled to the brim with
smug, self-righteous people, who are all too eager to condemn each other and,
while they’re at it, fleece each other out of house and home if that is at all
possible. We pay attention to everything everybody else is doing wrong while we
live however we want. We never consider that it is our own fault.
Think about that. Everybody knows we’re in a terrible mess.
That’s about the only thing we all agree on. The proper way that we, as
Christ’s disciples, should think about this is that it’s our fault. God is
punishing us for our sins. We should repent lest we likewise perish. Those
so-called “little sins” that we do—they are hardly worth mentioning compared
cutting out tongues and other such things—what if it is our daily, run-of-the-mill
unrighteousness that has brought upon us our calamities?
It is never that beneficial to focus on other people’s sins.
If God has given you the authority and task of watching over others, then, by
all means, do the job God has given you to do with fearlessness and gusto. But
focusing on other people’s sins never, ever brings about an improvement in
ourselves. We always come away from such activity feeling superior, feeling justified.
That, however, is a fake, sin-producing, flimsy justification.
It is only Jesus’s justification, Jesus’s atonement, that
has stomped down evil and will ultimately stomp it down completely. Jesus’s
justification makes justice roll down as waters, and righteousness like an
ever-flowing stream.
We cannot justify ourselves. We cannot fix ourselves. But
God forgives those who repent. He heals those who are wounded. God does such a
better job at being God than we ever will. Let God be God. You strive to be his
faithful creature. Repent, and believe in Jesus.
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