Grace to you and Peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen
“Come, Lord Jesus!”
Come, Lord Jesus! We pray.
But first, it is John that we must see. First it is the baptizing firebrand of a preacher, calling the nation of Israel to repentance that enters into our life. And so it must be. You see the Messiah cannot come, until the prophet prepares the way.
John calls us to repentance. His is a ministry of truth telling. The truth telling that is repentance is not the harsh words of a wild haired preacher declaring “you brood of vipers!”
The truth telling of repentance is what happens in that moment when we look into the mirror and we can no longer pretend. It is that moment when we see ourselves for who we actually are, not for who we wish we might be.
Such truth telling is painful and frightening. So much so that many of us spend our entire lives running from the truth, and creating a virtual palace of lies within which we live and with which we will die.
Unless we come to meet, John.
I have been gone for awhile, now. Perhaps a few of you noticed! My first reaction, coming back to preach today, and seeing that the Gospel lesson began with John’s exhortation “You brood of vipers!” was that there was no way in the world that I could return to preach on this text. But then, on Friday I realized that there was no more appropriate text for me to wrestle with.
For me, these last two months were a wilderness experience. Like the Jewish people in John’s day, I was led into the wilderness to encounter John, but more importantly to come face to face with myself and with the truth.
I have struggled with depression since my youth. The one symptom that has been continuous since my adolescence was insomnia. 15 years ago I was first diagnosed and entered into treatment. I went through about four years of counseling, detailing about every experience of my life. And yet, I realize that in a very profound way, none of that truth telling was in fact the truth telling that really makes a difference.
During that time we explored:
- My childhood and the profound hunger for affection;
- A relationship with my band director and the affection that was abusive;
- The deep hurt experienced when a pastor and father figure was involved in sexual misconduct;
- The feeling of betrayal and abuse that I have experienced from the Church itself;
- And many other issues.
There was a lot of truth in all of that. But John was not there.
There is no value whatsoever in confessing other people’s sins. No redemptive value whatsoever. It’s not that those things didn’t impact my life, they clearly did. And, the truth is that
- Children need to know they are loved;
- Young boys should never be abused;
- Pastor’s should not engage in sexual misconduct;
- The Church should be a place of love and forgiveness, not betrayal and abuse.
These things, are in fact, all true. True, but irrelevant. Recognizing past wrongs, confessing other people’s sins, only creates a sense of being helpless victims or a false sense of self righteousness. And when we do that, we are merely adding to that palace of lies in which we live and with which we will die.
But then there is John, calling us to a rigorous honesty, calling us to repentance, calling us to lives changed, and renewed.
These last few months I have been in conversation with John. My John the Baptist was not a first century prophet, but a twenty first century Psychiatrist. What they have in common though, is that sitting face to face with them, one can simply no longer lie. One must finally, face the truth, not about others, but about ourselves. The truth is not easy to acknowledge.
The hardest words that I have ever heard were:
“Dave, you are an alcoholic.”
And a thousand times harder than hearing those words, were saying to my wife, “I am an alcoholic.”
Back in ’97, when I began treatment for depression, in addition to an anti-depressant, I was prescribed Ativan, an anti-anxiety medication that also helps one sleep. And sleep I did. For the first time since adolescence I was able to lie down, go to sleep, and remain asleep for 7 to 8 hours.
What I didn’t know then was that Ativan is highly addictive and habituating; and it works in the brain very similar to alcohol. In 2003, I was feeling so good that I decided to go off all of my medications, including Ativan. What happened was that those receptors in my brain that had become addicted to Ativan sent off an alarm, which basically said: “If you’re not going to give us Ativan, you better come up with another alternative.”
Almost immediately I went from an occasional drink to needing two Scotch doubles a night just to sleep. Throughout the first twenty five years of our marriage I had drank alcohol only occasionally. Most of the time we didn’t have any at all in our house. I would have beer in the heat of the summer, and perhaps into the football season. I never consumed hard alcohol.
This last spring as my depression worsened, a new psychiatrist changed the antidepresent and put me back on Ativan, despite knowing that I was still regularly consuming alcohol. That is a potentially lethal combination and nearly cost me my life on October 14th. The time had come and I had to face the truth.
I am an alcoholic. I am powerless over alcohol and my life had become unmanageable.
John the Baptist calls us to such repentance. And my John the Baptist is known as “Dr. C.”
Would that that truth was the only truth I had to acknowledge. It has taken a life time to build a palace of lies, and such self deception doesn’t go away over night.
One of the reasons my depression has been worsening relates to my hopes, dreams, and sense of calling in ministry. When I entered ministry, it was with the most deep seated hope and conviction that if I were a faithful pastor, hard working, creative and caring, and one with a heart for mission and ministry—then the Church would thrive and nothing would be impossible. When I came to First Lutheran I shared with the council that though the worship attendance had been on the decline since 1986, I was absolutely committed to changing that, especially because Sandpoint was a growing community.
Growing it was, but not in worship attendance or Church membership. That decline in worship attendance that I noted in 2000 has continued. And the only thing that has changed is the color of our hair, or how much hair is left on some of our heads. And so I found myself being quite jealous of my father’s generation of pastors. Pastors such as Bob Nale who entered ministry after WWII and saw the Church thriving and growing during the post war years of the fifties, sixties, and seventies. And the more I thought about it, the more depressed I got.
The truth that I must now face, is that my own grandiose thoughts about how far my faithfulness and hard work could take the Church were really delusional. And my depression is the dark side of that delusion. To allow myself to feel responsible for the decline of the entirety of Christianity in our country, and to beat myself up for my failures, is in the end, to fanaticize that if I had just tried harder, I could have accomplished what in fact only God can accomplish.
In this John the Baptist gives us an example for living. “I am not the Messiah,” he says, “but there is one who is coming.”
And so we pray “Come, Lord Jesus!”
And Jesus will come.
But first we need to have a frank, honest, conversation with John the Baptist. We need to acknowledge that we are powerless and in bondage. Our confession of sin says it this way: “I am in bondage to sin and cannot free myself.”
In Alcoholics Anonymous this truth is reflected on page 60 of the big book, words that are read at the beginning of each meeting:
A) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives.B) That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.
And then, comes the promise:
C) That God could and would if He were sought.
Personally, I wish John the Baptist were not part of the picture. I would prefer to simply have the sweet baby Jesus, a child lying in a manger, and one to save me from my sins without having to face the demands of John the Baptist for repentance. I would prefer not to have to face the truth about myself. But it is only in truth, rigorous, painful, truth, that we are prepared to receive the Messiah.
If we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
God could and would if he were sought.
The bad news none of us wants to admit is that we need a savior. The good news is that he was, he is, and he is to come.
And so with the Church of every time and every place we pray “Come, Lord Jesus. Come.”
