I-N-G is for
In Neustadt's Gospel
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| Ron Neustadt Rolling back the wilderness |
I understand that the Metro St. Louis Coalition Executive Committee originally had planned to have this workshop occur last week. But what a happy coincidence that it ended up being today--during Lent--during this penitential season we have now entered. What a happy coincidence, I say, because evangelism and repentance go together. The Gospel reading we just heard--the one appointed to be read in our churches tomorrow--reminds us of that.
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.'
Repentance and evangelism go together. Jesus Himself put them together in his own preaching. Repent and believe in the good news. That message is not only for us to proclaim, but also for us to hear. "Repentance for what, though?" we might ask. Repentance for immorality? Repentance for hanky-panky, like the repentance John the Baptist called for from King Herod when Herod married his brother's wife? We don't have to go very far into Mark's story of Jesus to discover that it's much deeper than that.
When Jesus calls us to repent, there's much more at stake than morality vs. immorality. What's at stake is faith vs. unfaith; believing in the Good News or believing in some alternate Gospel; trusting the Promise made to us in our baptisms or trusting something else, or someone else. Repent and believe in the good news. That Word comes to all of us, whether we are moral or immoral; whether we are a drug dealer or the chairperson of the Evangelism committee, whether we are engaged in hanky-panky or wouldn't even think of it. So, of what might we need to repent?
I have heard it said that Lutherans do not have a good track record as evangelists. (Perhaps our presenter this morning will have something to say about that.) If my own personal track record is in any way typical of Lutherans in general, I know that it is more true than I would often like to admit. More often than I wish to admit, I have been willing to let people stew in their own juices instead of announcing to them the forgiveness of God that Jesus has authorized and even commanded me to announce. I have sometimes been hesitant to name the Holy Name of Jesus in order to cast out the demons that have taken hold of people's lives, demons of guilt and fear and regret. And sometimes I have even used religion as a way of not proclaiming the good news of Jesus, but rather as a way of proclaiming the goodness of myself, or as a way of "growing the church," as if the purpose of proclaiming the Gospel were to recruit more members who could be listed on the roster and added to the list of "contributing members."
And, I suspect that, if I am typical, so are you. Our track record has not been stellar. Even so, if that's as deep as our problem went, the solution would be fairly simple. We would just need to be reminded that we have been called to be evangelists. That's the great commission we have been given, so go do it. We would need only to be reminded that we could do better and that we should try harder. Perhaps we could be guilted into doing it. And perhaps we could be given some tools, some techniques, some program that would motivate us and outline what we need to do. Pray more, perhaps, or read our Bible more.
But the problem goes deeper. It's not just what we do or say, or what we fail to do or say. It's what's inside that's the deeper problem. And what's inside is that we don't always believe the good news ourselves. That's why we don't always share it. It's because we don't always trust it ourselves. It's because we find ourselves trusting someone else--or something else - an alternate gospel. A gospel of wealth, perhaps: news that we call "good" because it assures us that we have invested wisely with Thrivent. Or a gospel of health, perhaps: news that we call "good" because it assures us that we have exercised and eaten the right foods, and gotten enough rest. Or a gospel of security: news that we call "good" because it assures us that we are part of an "advanced" nation with a superior technology and with the strongest military the world has ever known. And we are always tempted to believe that because of any or all of the above, our futures are secure.
But, even then, there is this ache inside that never seems to go away no matter how much of this news we hear, because it is not God's Good News. So the aching does not go away. It's like being in a desert. It is being in a desert. It's being hungry, hungry for some good news. It's being thirsty, thirsty for God and for the life of God.
Worst of all, if we stay on the course we are on in this desert, a course that keeps taking us only toward all those things that look so good, but cannot offer what they seem to offer because they are not God, our only future is to die in the wilderness, with no protection from the tempter, with no ministrations from the angels, with hungers and thirst that are never satisfied, and finally to be possessed by God's arch-enemy. Call it hell.
But listen to this! That's the very wilderness that Jesus enters. Our wilderness. A wilderness out of which we cannot get ourselves--partly because of our own deadly love affair with it. That's the wilderness that Jesus enters. And He enters it, not just to be "with us" in the wilderness, not just to hold our hands while we die in it, but to roll the wilderness back, to push it back with the in-breaking of God's rule. He enters the wilderness to take possession of it once again and to bring life to it and to us.
Repent--and believe in the good news, He says. Turn around! That's what repentance is, you know. It's not merely contrition and feeling sorry, it's turning around, changing course, making a U-Turn--and seeing. "Turn around and see what I am doing for you," Jesus says. "Because I am forgiving you--forgiving you even for having put your trust in everything else but God. I am forgiving you for your idolatry of wealth and health and power. I am forgiving you for your poor track record."
Those are words that one does not speak lightly because those are words that make the one who speaks them accountable before God for the idolatry being forgiven. And, yet He speaks them. He makes that promise, knowing full well that there is no forgiveness of sins without the shedding of blood. And knowing full well that it will be His blood that gets shed if He intends to follow through on a promise like that, a promise where He assumes our accountability before God for our sins.
But that's what He does. And that's what sets us free--free from our sins. Free from having to make gods out of things and people who can never be God for us. Free from having to die in the wilderness and having that be the end of us. And free to believe that the splash of water and the ritualized words spoken over us in our baptisms do, indeed, make a difference--all the difference.
That's what makes the desert bloom for us: water and the Word. The Word of Him who entered our wilderness in order to reclaim us through the forgiveness of sins--and Who dies for doing so--and Who was raised by the Father Who was so well pleased with His Beloved Son for doing so. That's what makes us free.
Not only that. Not only do we get to rejoice in it for ourselves. It gets even better. We also get to roll back the desert for others, for the people we live with, and work with, and go to school with. We get to roll back the desert for them who are still stuck in the desert, who are still desperately hanging their hearts on people and on things that cannot be everything for them that they wish they could be. We get to roll back the wilderness for them. We get to pour the water of Holy Baptism and make their deserts bloom. We get to ease the aching deep within them by doing for them the same thing he has done for us: by forgiving sins in His Name, by proclaiming the Good News that in Jesus, God's merciful way of ruling has come near to them, too. And by inviting them to turn around and see what God has done for us all. Amen.
Ronald C. Neustadt
