Renounce

SCRIPTURE TEXT:  Matthew 4:1-11
SERMON SERIES:  Living Our Baptismal Calling
Rev. Monte Marshall

Following the dramatic reading of this morning’s text from Matthew’s gospel, we were asked a question: “Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin?”  Do we recognize the question?  It comes from our baptismal liturgy.  In fact, it’s the first of a series of questions asked prior to baptism.

Beginning today, the first Sunday of Lent, and continuing through the remaining five Sundays of the season, we’ll focus on the questions from our baptismal liturgy.  Our theme will be Living Our Baptismal Calling. 

As originally conceived, Lent was a period of intense preparation and support for candidates seeking baptism into a new life as followers of Jesus Christ.  Our aim this year is not so much preparation as it is renewal.  We’re looking to engage our congregation in an intentional process of formation that will renew us in our baptismal calling to live in the way of Jesus.  Now there are many ways to participate in this process, some of which are outlined in today’s newsletter.  I encourage your participation.

Now to the question at hand: “Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this work, and repent of your sin?”  The phrasing of the question may strike some of us as archaic, but its point is as relevant today as ever.

For example, in a speech delivered on November 15, 2016, to the Oxford Union, renowned physicist, Stephen Hawking, made a startling prediction.  He said that he believed our days on this planet are numbered.  Hawking stated that dire threats to humanity and to the planet, brought about by the clear and present dangers of global nuclear war, climate change, artificial intelligence, genetically engineered viruses, and other evil powers, threaten the existence of earth itself.  He suggested that we have 1000 years to find another planet that might support human life, and he said that the longer human beings live on Earth, the higher the risk of Earth’s demise.”[1]

Now it seems to me that the actions taken by human beings to produce the “dire threats to humanity and to the planet” noted by Dr. Hawking are aptly described by words such as wickedness, evil and sin.  In our abuse of the earth and one another, we’re missing the mark.  We’re thumbing our noses at our Creator.  We’re in active rebellion against that goodness that is at the core of creation. 

And there’s more going on here than personal moral failings.  There are systemic forces at work here.  The New Testament calls them “principalities and powers.”  Commentator Dawn Chesser draws from the work of Walter Wink in describing the “principalities and powers.”  She writes that the “principalities and powers” are “large and impersonal” forces.  “They are part of our culture.  They are embedded in our institutions.  They are the pool in which we all swim.”

She illustrates with two examples.  “In Nazi Germany,” she writes, “people spoke of the palpable evil in the ‘air,’ a pervading ‘atmosphere that hung over the land and filled the world with foreboding and menace.  We might speak today of the awful terror we felt, something that just wouldn’t go away, after 9/11.” 

She then notes that “what we are describing is a collective feeling, and experience of something we know is bad, and that we fear, and that is powerful, and that we must fight against…. When these ‘powers’…become organized into a particular worldview, then the ‘evil’ can become associated with a particular group.  We divide ourselves into good and evil, saints and sinners, righteous and unrighteous.  Evil gets projected on others, until finally, our ‘demons’ devolve into ‘isms’: racism, sexism, political or religious oppression, patriarchy, militarism, corporate greed, xenophobia, ecological destruction,” and I would add, homophobia and trans-phobia.  When we come to the waters of baptism, and respond to that first baptismal question with the words, “I do,” we are renouncing these powers so that we might live fully into the way of Jesus.

And lest we forget, Jesus had his own struggles with the powers—personified in the figure of the Devil or Satan.  In this morning’s text from Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is in the desert.  He’s been led there by the Spirit in the immediate aftermath of his baptism.  He’s been fasting for forty days and forty nights.  He’s vulnerable.  And its then that he’s tempted: “’If you are the Only Begotten, command these stones to turn into bread… If you are the Only Begotten, throw yourself down [from the parapet of the Temple].  Scripture has it, ‘God will tell the angels to take care of you; with their hands they will support you that you may never stumble on a stone… All these [dominions of the world] I will give you if you fall down and worship me.’”

At the end of each enticement, the question is:  Will Jesus fulfill his baptismal calling as “God’s Only Begotten” and renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this work, and repent of the sin he’s being tempted to embrace, or will he yield to Satan? 

In each case, Jesus holds fast to his baptismal calling: “’We live not on bread alone but on every utterance that comes from the mouth of God… Do not put God to the test… You will worship the Most High God; God alone will you adore.’”  At the story’s end, the devil leaves and the angels arrive to “attend Jesus.”

Now here’s the question for us:  Given the challenges that we face in today’s world, how will we hold fast to our baptismal calling to renounce, reject and repent?  This is how UCC pastor, Robin Meyers, proposes that we respond.  In addressing a group of graduating seminarians, he uses the metaphor of “Empire” to encompass every system at odds with God’s reign: He writes: “Dear Graduates: Not only do we live in the Empire.  The Empire lives in us…. But in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, our Teacher and Lord, we do not have to obey the Empire.  We do not have to cower before it, or subsidize it, or be its compliant acolyte.  

“Instead of passing one more resolution about the importance of feeding the hungry, we can simply resolve to actually feed them—and then resolutely go about doing so.  We can refuse to give up on the lost; we can forgive those who have wronged us; we can reject violence in all of its guises.   

“We can boycott products that hurt workers or children or this earthly garden that has been given to us.  Those of us who have more than we need will share out of our excess with those who have less than they need.  We will not participate in making a scapegoat of our Hispanic sisters and brothers, and we will make arrangements ahead of time to hide an innocent Muslim family should another major terrorist attack occur.  We promise God and one another that we will find ways to withdraw our cooperation from all systems that deal death and diminish dignity. 

“Loyalty to a new ethic, The Way of Jesus, will be our only creed.  And worship will be as diverse as the human family.

“We will seek to live comfortably inside our own skins and in harmony with a beleaguered planet.  We will regard the final act of grace to be that which makes a person gracious.  Love of God and neighbor will be more important than arguments over the virgin birth or endless enterprising calculations about the end times.  We will build communities in which no one can be denied access to an experience of the divine.  The final act of love will be to love even the unlovable.  We will do strange and wonderful things that make no sense to anyone and then we will smile when someone wonders why improbably wonderful things keep happening to us.”[2]

Well, that’s Robin Meyers’ proposed response.  How do we respond?  I invite you now to ponder three questions: 

• What spiritual forces of wickedness have I renounced or now pledge to renounce? 
• What evil power of this world have I rejected or now pledge to reject?
• What sinful pattern of life have I turned from or now pledge to turn from? 

I give you time to reflect and respond.  REFLECTION 

Gracious God, give us the strength to renounce, reject and repent so that we might live into our baptismal calling by following in the way of Jesus.  Amen.