ADVENT 2 – DECEMBER 4, 2011
Sometimes my husband Bob tells people that he's married to a televangelist. A televangelist: that's a joke... a joke made possible by First Lutheran's history of being broadcast on our local cable channel. Pastor Bob Swanson was a televangelist before me. And you could say the same about anyone who has preached here since the broadcast began: Pastors Karen Leedahl, Nelson Ilgenfritz, Warren Karshin, Wilbert Boerstler. We are some of the Lutheran pastors privileged to preach here with a television audience looking in on Monday night; but it's doubtful that any of us would describe ourselves as televangelists. There's a sort of televangelist stereotype that just doesn't fit us.
John the Baptist doesn't fit the stereotype either, but he was the closest thing to a televangelist in Judea at the beginning of the first century. According to this reading from Mark, think of his "viewership;" think of his Nielson ratings: people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him. Enormously popular, he had the whole market; he had everyone!
Who has the whole market today? There are so many evangelists on TV that no one has everyone. You may have watched some of them. Whether Billy Graham when his crusades were at their height, Robert Schuller when the Crystal Cathedral was going strong, or Charles Stanley on WJAC before you come here for worship on Sunday (*): they are not preachers like John the Baptist, standing on the river bank, dressed in animal skins, eating locusts and haranguing his listeners. They have huge assembly halls, suits, ties, and good haircuts. We hear Schuller's teachings on the Be Happy Attitudes and Stanley's 30 Life Principles.
The top of the heap in televangelism right now is Joel Osteen, who is credited with having the largest Christian congregation in the United States. He has 38,000 attending worship weekly, viewers in 100 countries, and a TV audience estimated at ten million. He always has a tie on and (with the broadest smile) can tell us how to have our "best life now." Who could be more different from the ragtag messenger that God sent into the wilderness crying, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord"? Osteen has the enormous following today; the presentation of his message and the content of his message are polar opposites to John's in the wilderness. It makes me wonder what kind of a reception – what kind of a viewership – John would get today.
The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going to him (why?) to confess their sins and be baptized as an act of repentance. How curious, that people would come in droves to a preacher whose message was about repenting of sins. It's a little out of fashion to talk about sin today. In our American culture, do we even believe in sin any more? When we turn to God, is it because we're not quite our best selves yet and we need a boost, or is it because we're miserable sinners who need mercy and forgiveness?
There have been times when sin was the big draw, the most popular subject for preachers with an evangelical bent. In the American colonies, Jonathan Edwards sparked a Great Awakening with these and similar words: O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed against you as much as against the damned in hell.
(July 8, 1741)In America's Second Great Awakening (1820's and 1830's), Charles Finney created the "anxious seat" or "mourners' bench" where those who had not yet repented could become worried enough or frightened enough to come to Christ. Finney preached: When sinners are careless and stupid, and sinking into hell unconcerned, it is... as much the duty of the church to awake as it is for the fireman to awake when a fire breaks out in the night in a great city." There was an urgent need for preachers to be scaring people out of their sin.
There was a revivalist spirit among Lutherans, believe it or not. I'm quoting from one of my seminary text books about a period in American history when Lutherans had "vigorous and unrestrained revivals... noisy, protracted meetings... [with] loud weepings and audible shouts for mercy."
[Nelson, p. 144] Among Lutherans objection to revivalism was as passionate as revivalism itself – as we who worship with a certain decorum and restraint can imagine. However, no matter the resistance to over-the-top emotionalism in worship, our Lutheran forbears were not wrong to hold up our tradition's convictions about sin and our need to run to the cross of Christ.In an early writing, Martin Luther taught that our so-called good works are likely to be mortal sins and that unless we utterly despair of our own ability to overcome sin, we are not prepared to receive the grace of Christ.
[Heidelberg Disputation, theses #3 and 18] Preaching and teaching about sin may be out of fashion, but sin itself is as popular in our day as it was in Luther's day, and John the Baptist's. So hear John the Baptist calling us to repent. Hear in 2nd Peter the good news that God is not destroying the world because God wants all of us to repent and is giving us time. Cling to the beautiful words of Isaiah – so familiar and loved from Handel's Messiah – that God's people Israel are to be comforted. Their punishment is over, and God will feed them like a shepherd, leading the ewes, gathering the lambs and carrying them in his arms. May God so feed and lead and carry us.Today's televangelists are not much like John, who was at the top of the charts when Jesus began his ministry. Preaching sin may be out of fashion on TV, but sin is as widespread as ever – around us and within us. Therefore this televangelist urges that all of us face ourselves honestly and turn to God. God's comfort, guidance and care are free gifts for those who are in need of grace. God's word today is, "Repent, my people. [And] comfort, comfort, my people."