SPECIAL DAYS: Second Sunday of Advent, Communion Sunday

December 6, 1998 - LESSON: Matthew 3:1-12, NRSV

SERMON TITLE: Stranger In a Strange Land

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INTRODUCTION:

  1. Alexander Dumas popularized an incident in French History in his book, The Man In the Iron Mask.
    1. The movie portrays the man as the twin brother of Louis XIV.
      1. It was not.
      2. It was Count Girolamo Mattioli who acted treacherously toward the King is refusing to give up a fortress in Italy after signing a treaty to do so.
    2. The count was held for over 40 years in various prisons.
      1. He was a stranger in a strange land.
      2. His life was blocked.
      3. He could not do what he wanted to. 
      4. He is at the mercy of his keepers. 
  2. There are times when our own lives become blocked. 
    1. What is meant by blocked?
      1. We cannot do what we want to do.
      2. We are at the mercy of our keepers.
        1. Call it fate
        2. Call it a web of circumstances.
        3. Call it a creation of our own making.
        4. It is a point in life when we come to believe we have run out of options.
    2. To be blocked is the hardest thing with which we have to deal.

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MAIN BODY:

  1. When you examine seriously the methods that we seek to use to unblock ourselves, you begin to dimly realize the problems that God faces with humankind.
    1. Resignation
    2. Containment
    3. Pressure
      1. Boycotts
      2. Sanctions
    4. Exercise of force. 
  2. What does God do?
    1. God is not resigned to laves us to our fate.
    2. God does not use containment.
    3. God does not use pressure
      1. Boycotts
      2. Sanctions
    4. God does not exercise the use of force.
    5. He sends a man in the spirit of Elijah and a Savior.
  3. It is amazing how appropriate the message of John the Baptist is in application to removing the blockages in life.
    1. His reception and his message reveals them.
      1. Repent...prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
        1. Remove the block of self-deception
          1. Do not presume to say that you have Abraham for your father.
          2. The modern counterpoint is to appeal to our essential goodness.
            1. God does not save good people.
            2. God saves repentant people.

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        2. Remove the block of inconsistency
          1. Make his paths straight.
          2. He is quoting from Isaiah 40.
            1. (Isaiah 40:3-5 NRSV) A voice cries out: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. [4] Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. [5] Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken."
          3. There are mountains and hills.
            1. These are obstacles in the way.
            2. They represent our prejudices.
            3. They symbolize our self-absorbed desire to put our knowledge and views before that of God.
          4. The valleys shall be lifted up.
            1. The valley are the emotions that consumes us.
            2. The valley is the despair and discouragement that confines us to the gorge of selfish desire.
        3. Remove the block of disingenuous.
          1. You need to recognize and understand your condition before God.
          2. Repentance is a turning away from sin and a turning towards God.
          3. You can only repent, turn towards, when you admit that you need to turn from the harmful to the helpful.

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    2. All of these blockages can be overcome.
      1. The Savior is coming.
      2. He will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire.
        1. The Spirit is the source of the spirit of Christ.
        2. The fire symbolizes the burning away of the dross of life.
          1. The selfishness that blocks love.
          2. The self-centeredness which blocks relationships.
    3. Thomas Merton understands the message of John(1)
      1. He writes, "The things we really need come to us only as gifts, and in order to receive them as gifts we have to be open. In order to be open, we have to renounce ourselves; in a sense we have to die to our image of ourselves, our autonomy, our fixation upon our self-willed identity. We have to be able to relax the psychic and spiritual cramp which knots us in the painful, vulnerable, helpless 'I' that is all we know as ourselves.
      2. "The chronic inability to relax this cramp begets despair. In the end, as we realize more and more that we are knotted upon nothing, that the cramp is a meaningless, senseless, pointless affirmation of nonentity, and that we must nevertheless continue to affirm our nothingness over against everything else - our frustration becomes absolute. We become incapable of existing except as a 'no,' which we fling in the face of everything. This 'no' to everything serves as our pitiful 'yes' to ourselves - a makeshift identity which is nothing."
      3. He is speaking of the unblocking force of repentance and action.

CONCLUSION:

  1. If we are going to unblock our lives we must learn the principles of life and relationship that Jesus offer us.
    1. We need to begin with the simple things and progress towards those which are more difficult.
      1. Love and faith and hope and grace.
      2. The nature of God and the many benefits that God offers us.

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    2. This is aptly illustrated by William Boggs, in his book, Sin Boldly: but Trust God More Boldy Still(2).
      1. He describes how we can acquire what it is that we need.
        1. He writes: "One hot Carolina afternoon, on a visit home, my family and I were driving along when we passed an orchard of peaches that advertised especially low prices if we were only willing to pick them ourselves.
        2. "I doubt that any bargain would be sufficiently attractive to me now to lure me out of my air-conditioned car and into a steamy afternoon to pick peaches, but we were younger then, poorer then and in less of a hurry than we tend to be these days.
        3. "So we pulled over, paid our money, and selected a bushel basket to fill with fresh, ripe Spartanburg peaches.
        4. "As we set off into the orchard, an old fellow, as wrinkled as a peach pit and who was tending the place, said, 'If you want the best fruit, go deeper into the orchard; the peaches along the fringes are picked over, but deeper into the orchard, you'll find the best fruit.'
        5. "We walked a way, far enough along that I figured we had gone past the picked-over sections.
        6. "But just as we set the basket down, he hollered, 'Go deeper.'
        7. "So we picked up the basket, went a little farther, set the basket down, and again we heard him shouting his advice, 'Go deeper. The best fruit's farther in.'
        8. "Once more we picked up the basket and walked along, finally deciding that surely we were now deep enough, but once more as we prepared to pick the peaches, he hollered, 'Go on. Go deeper.'
        9. "This time we went a substantially longer distance, and discovered that indeed he was right.
        10. "The finest, plumpest peaches were untouched and waiting for us". 
  2. So many people pick around the edges of God's peach or apple orchard.
    1. The fruit is good but there is still more fruit to be picked and enjoyed.
    2. Fruit which nourishes the soul and the spirit.
      1. Are we complete? No!
      2. Are we perfect? No!
      3. Do we still have much to learn? Yes!
    3. To go deeper is an encouragement to eat and drink deeply for that which provides the greatest satisfaction.
    4. We too can go deeper and find that which Jesus provides which fulfills the call of John to repent and make straight paths for the Lord.

1. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (New York: Image Books, 1968), 224.
2. William Boggs, in his book, Sin Boldly: But Trust God More Boldly Still (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990), (101-102).

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