Sermon: This Generation

                 This Generation,

it was like a child intentionally singing out of tune,
out of tune with what God was doing
—giving the wrong answer to the question: “When are we?”
They could not meet the moment or discern the Spirit.

                This Generation,
it seeks to crush Christ with questions, pick apart his nature…
but more than that, they never intended to give Jesus a fair shake,
they were unconvinced from the beginning
—it wasn’t just that what God was doing didn’t click for them
—it was that they didn’t want it to click…
They might claim they want an ascetic prophet like John…
they might claim they want Wisdom in the Flesh,
calling everyone to the Proverbial Meal of plenty…
but instead they slander John, saying he has a demon
and Jesus—a lush and a glutton—for associating with the dregs of society!
They are starting with NO.

                Have you ever done that?
—entered a conversation with the singular goal of denying the other person?
Have you ever had one of those conversations where the other person
—just by body language alone
—had it out for you?

This Generation was already convinced of a system of heavy burdens
to score points,
domination by right answer,
Religious Teaching and Laws, as mainly used to bolster authority
—God’s blessing as privilege and a place at the top of the heap.

Oh my—This Generation.

Let us pray.

 

                This Generation
—certainly not confined to the late 20s and early 30s,
or confined to the regions where Jesus’ sandals once stepped.

                If Jesus came 250 years ago, crossing the Atlantic,
to witness the signing of the Declaration of Independence,
he would have met just such a Generation.
If Jesus came today
—yes, here too, now too.

 

This reality is great grist for writers and thinkers:
-Russian Novelist Dostoyevsky famously wrote a chapter in “The Brothers Karamazov” “The Grand Inquisitor”
about Jesus showing up during the Spanish Inquisition.
-Similarly (and curiously written in the same year) Charles Monroe Sheldon preached his famed "In His Steps" sermon series
about Jesus showing up in Kansas and collapsing at the altar of a congregation,
and causing everyone to ask the question, "What would Jesus do?"
-In a milder form, Father Joseph Francis Girzone’s “Joshua” series
told similar stories about Jesus showing up in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s.

 

Jesus will always be met with unbelief, with an obstinate no!
After all, we humans are always caught, as Paul starkly describes in Romans 7
—captured in self-forged chains formed from self-soothing behaviors,
caught in wretched repose between
the Idea and the Deed, Desire and ability,
crying out:
“I do not do the good I want,
but the evil I do not want is what I do.”

I don’t know if you remember seeing it,
but the comedian Jimmy Kimmel once pranked his aunt Chippy,
by tricking her into a self-driving car.

The driver seat belts her in, and then steps away from the car, and it starts going.
As you might imagine, she freaks out,
there is a moment where you can tell she’s not sure if this is the end for her
—she didn’t know what she was getting into,
she didn’t know what she chose to do,
she was stuck going where she didn’t want to go!

So too all of us, stuck… freaked out,
exclaiming like the Apostle Paul: Stuck! “Wretch that I am! Who will save me from this body of death?”

 

Stuck, save revelation given by the Son of God.

Stuck… every generation…
save for this beautiful welcome…
every generation also hears these generous words of Jesus,
“All you weary and heavy burdened—I give you rest.
My yoke—my teaching—it is gentle and humble,
restful to your soul!  My burden light, my yoke easy!”

To quote Lutheran cartoonist Daniel Erlander,
Christians are “a pointless people.”
This way of Jesus is not about keeping score,
but residing in the given goodness of it all!
Instead of right answer—right-wised, justified, by God.
Religion not about privileges or placeholding,
but for wisdom, so that the weary might find rest,
the put upon of This Generation embraced by gentleness.

His yoke
—yes a way to talk about Rabbinic teaching—and also, think of the metaphor!
—yokes aren’t hefted alone! “Christ beside you.”
Jesus dragging us along,
a burden that is not a burden,
a restful yoke… what a thing!
Thanks be to God!

Accusations that John is a Demon and Jesus walks beside the dregs of society become something else!
—those very people who are blessed by the beatitudes:
those starved of justice and humiliated,
the miserable and hopeless
—they are carried by Christ!

 

To put some traditional language on it all:
The Messiah’s honor is there imputed!
Jesus receives all the scorn of the status quo of every generation,
and in exchange gives all good things to the heavy burdened
—we sinners, we captured ones:

-the simple seekers in need of a gentle savior like Joshua,
-the left out and intentionally lost mourned for, with the lament, “What would Jesus do?”,
-those imprisoned by walls and by cruel controlling men—like Dostoyevsky’s Savior,
-the huddling masses yearning to be free & those denied their unalienable Rights
—like America’s founders wrote about 250 years ago, and our highest ideals still ring out…

 

                Every generation squalid and squandering, O Sinner!
stone hearted and mean with their “No” to Christ… come home!
To every generation he reveals himself, here among us—come home!
—with us, carrying us!
in common meal & community, Word & Water… come home!
Revealed to every generation
—to every generation rest and rescue.
You who are weary, come home!

Amen.