Sermon manuscript:
Today I’d like to talk about “extremism.” We often hear of
extremism and extremists. Extremism is never a good thing. Extremists go too
far; they go to the extreme. That’s always going to create conflict, because
not everyone is on the same page. Extremists are destructive to relationships. The
conflict between the extremist and the supposed non-extremist creates violence
without fail. That violence might be with words. Some extremists are even
physically violent.
It would be foolish, and even insane, to want to endorse all
extremism. Endorsing all extremism would involve irreconcilable contradictions.
Being extreme in one direction means that you can’t be extreme in the opposite
direction. For example, a so-called far right extremist cannot at the same time
be a so-called far left extremist. That would be a house divided against
itself. And many kinds of extremism are evil, destructive, hate-filled, unjust,
altogether horrible. So extremism as extremism cannot be endorsed.
But here is something that we as Christians have to wrestle
with: Jesus was and is an extremist. Jesus held extreme views and said extreme
things. The Gospels are full of these extreme statements.
Jesus says: “Love your enemies, and do good to them.”
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all
your strength, and with all your mind.” “I say to you whoever is angry
with his brother is liable to judgement.” “I say to you that anyone who
is divorced, except on the ground of sexual immorality, commits adultery if
married again.” “I say to you that it is easier for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”
“If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. If your eye causes you to sin,
pluck it out.” And there are many, many more. These statements are extreme
because they go way beyond what ordinary folks think.
But maybe what ordinary folks think is an extremism all its
own. Jesus is an extremist for the glory of the Father, for God’s commandments,
and for God’s will. The great herd has its own commitments too.
A while back I spoke to you about the training in
covetousness that the ungodly go to the gym in order to exercise. Too much is
never enough. More for myself is always better than less. In the pursuit of
happiness all that matters is that you don’t get caught. You hide, so no prying
eyes may see. You lie, so that you won’t be held responsible. You’re mean, so
that nobody messes with you. You manipulate, so that you only have to do what
you want. Here, again, I could go on and on.
We might sum it all up by saying that it is all selfishness
and and self-aggrandizement and self-worship. We can never have too much money
or too much power. Nobody can give us too much honor, too many congratulations.
Is not this going to extremes?
“But,” a person might justifiably say, “everybody’s like
that. If everybody’s like that, then it can’t be extremism.” True enough. We
are like that. The reason why everybody’s like that is because we were all born
this way. If we’re all born this way then there’s nothing we can do about it.
Fine, we’re extreme in our selfishness, ambition, love of glory, and so on, but
it’s fine. We’re fine. We’re just like everybody else, and we’re all fine. This
is an extremely powerful line of reasoning.
It’s been powerful ever since the beginning. When Adam and
Eve were tempted they ended up getting convinced that they would be fine. God
said, “In the day that you eat of it you will surely die,” but the devil
said, “you won’t surely die,” so who’s to say? We’ll probably be fine. We’re
fine.
They weren’t fine, of course. How can anyone be fine who is
living in rebellion against his or her Creator? Adam and Eve sensed this after
they sinned, but they couldn’t bring themselves to admit it. They just went
right on ahead convincing themselves that they were fine. They tried to forget
about God, and got busy living. They stitched together some clothes and set
about increasing their quality of life. So long as God stayed away they could
keep up this fiction that they were fine.
And that was quite a fiction, and a deliberate blindness! With
the fall into sin Adam and Eve were corrupted in all the ways that we are
corrupted. Lusts and greed and perversions were poured into their soul from
their new master. Regardless, despite this extremism of theirs, they kept
telling themselves that they were fine.
The last thing that they wanted to hear was God coming
towards them in the cool of the day. That was when the lies collapsed. They
weren’t fine. They looked for someplace to hide. If there was a mountain
available, I’m sure they would have liked to have been covered by it. This was
an extremely unpleasant experience for them. It’s like when a kid has to get a
splinter removed. All that the kid knows is that getting the splinter removed
means more pain than what is already being experienced, and so keep that pin or
those tweezers away!
But that is actually a pretty paltry example. Paul says that
it’s not just painful. A death takes place. The Old Adam in us must be drowned
and die together with all sins and evil desires. You are not fine. It does not
matter one bit whether other people are just like you. It doesn’t matter
whether everybody validates you and celebrates you. No amount of celebrating
can stand up against the truth, just as no amount of clothing was able to take
away Adam and Eve’s shame.
As you Christians know, of course, God was not coming just to kill them. In a sense, God really
did kill them. That is to say, God killed their hopes and dreams. Realize that
before they heard God coming toward them they had been hoping that the devil
was right. The devil had said that they wouldn’t surely die. “Pretty, pretty
please, let’s not ever, ever think that we less than perfect.” This had to die.
It’s not true.
But, as you Christians know, God also told them another
truth: The Seed of the woman is going to crush the serpent’s head. That truth
is just as true as the truth that you are not fine. They will be redeemed.
Realize, however, that this is not a Hallmark movie. Our
sin, our debt, has not just been pretended away. Our salvation is shocking. The
Son of God became a curse. The Holy One became sin and died on a cross. God
goes to extremes in order to set us free from our slavery to vanity and death
and the rotting of our corpse. The world is full of people who find this
extremism on God’s part to be distasteful. Some feel as though God couldn’t
die. It’s against the rules. Some feel that God shouldn’t die. Everybody can see
that it’s violent. It’s bloody. It’s dirty. It’s extreme.
But what is this extremism all in service to? To what
extreme is all of this directed? It is directed toward love. God so loved the
world that he gave his only begotten Son… God did not send his Son into the
world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.
Jesus says, “I have come that people may have life, and that they may have
it more abundantly.” God’s extremism is all for our good, and, at the same
time, against all that is evil.
So let’s acknowledge the truth that the Gospel is extreme.
Jesus is an extremist. So also our sinful Old Adam is an extremist. We are
extreme about very different things. This contrasting extremism is going to
make for some tense conversations. Again, do you suppose the conversation
between God and Adam and Eve was intense? That’s how it is for every sinner who
is saved. We don’t just have a splinter that needs to be pulled out of our
otherwise healthy flesh. Admitting that you are not fine, having your shameful nakedness exposed, blushing at your
extremism for ugly and harmful things—this is not the funnest thing in the
world.
But it is good. It sets us free from lies. And God does not
leave us naked and ashamed just as he didn’t leave Adam and Eve naked and
ashamed. He forgives us with a perfect forgiveness. He replaces our fig leaves
with the righteousness of Jesus. Jesus’s righteousness is your righteousness.
You have been baptized into Christ. God receives us and welcomes us. He is
healing us with our sanctification. One day that healing will be complete. When
that happens, and when we see God, for the first time we will begin to
understand what Jesus means when he says that he has come so that we may have
life, and that we may have it more abundantly. This is good extremism.
But, as a message that is extreme, it is going to strike us
as being extreme. In our Gospel reading there is an intense conversation
between Jesus and some Jews. These Jews thought that they were fine. They had
Abraham as their father. They had never been enslaved to anyone. As for this
Jesus, they weren’t so sure who his father was, and he was from Galilee. They
figured that anyone who would dare to say that they were not fine must be a
hater or have a demon.
Let me pause to note how this rings true in all times,
including ours. Anybody who dares to point out the sins of another is at best
socially inept, and at worst vile and evil. Hardly anybody believes in demons
anymore, but if they did, they would say the same thing these Jews said to
Jesus: You must have a demon!
When Jesus responds to the Jews, it is with some heat of its
own. He does not have a demon. He is glorifying the Father, while they are
dishonoring him. They do not know the Father. He knows the Father. If he were
to say that he didn’t know the Father, then he would be a liar… Then he tosses
in: “a liar like them.”
With those last few words, “…then I would be a liar like
you,” the referee blows the whistle and throws a flag: “Unnecessary
roughness.” Jesus is being inflammatory. He didn’t need to call them liars.
Violence like that should be condemned. It’s totally uncalled for. Otherwise
how can we just go on ignoring him so that we go back to making money, watching
TV, and buying stuff?
Maybe that’s why we’ve all been so thoroughly catechized
that extremism is bad. The powers that be only want us to believe that money, winning
at sportys, and so on are important. Everything else is unimportant ,and so
nobody should ever get too excited about such things.
Think about it: if something is unimportant, why would
anybody ever get upset about it? Wouldn’t it be the height of foolishness for
me to get upset about what flavor of ice cream you like? Raking you over the
coals for not liking double fudge brownie? That would be ridiculous! That’s
what folks want to do to religion too. First of all, we’re already all fine.
Everybody knows that. Second of all religion is just a hobby. Anybody who says
it’s anything more than that is some kind of dangerous extremist.
So be it. Jesus is an extremist. He is extreme about
everything that is good, right, and true. It’s only natural, then, that he is
going to conflict with us who are extreme about selfishness, lying and getting
our own way. Jesus’s extremism is good. Our extremism is evil. If anybody gets
offended at Jesus’s extremism, then I say that’s a good sign. At least they are
paying attention.
I, together with the rest of the human race, do not want my
nakedness exposed. I want to believe that I’m fine. What God teaches me,
however, is that I am not fine. I’m a liar, I’m a thief, I’m a pervert, I’m no
good at praying, I’m bored by God’s Word. The good that I want to do I don’t
end up doing. The evil that I don’t want to do, that’s what I end up doing. I’m
not fine.
And here is what sets Christians apart from the rest of the
human race: We don’t, or rather, we shouldn’t be offended when we are
identified as sinners. It’s the truth! We are. But Jesus is the Savior of
sinners. That’s the truth too.
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