Survivor Series

Pastor Meyer's Sermon

  Ash Wednesday, March 1, 2006

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our heavenly Father and from our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus, our Christ.

The text on which we base our meditation this evening, this Ash Wednesday evening, is from our gospel reading from the book of Luke 11, specifically Verse 29, “It, that is this generation, asks for a miraculous sign but the only sign that will be given to it is the sign of Jonah.”

My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, what gets your attention? Sure, we might hear a loud noise, like a horn honk, or maybe bright, flashing lights or maybe bright colors might get your attention. But also signs get our attention. The Highway Department had been spending thousands of dollars to try to figure out how to best get your attention. After all, we can't even drive without seeing signs. And so they do their research. Does this particular color get your attention better than this? And then we think about stop signs. We think about yield signs. We think about caution signs. They all are different colors so they can get our attention.

Also, the advertising world spends thousands of dollars to try to figure out how to get your attention. And, lately, what's been getting my attention are those pop-up screens that come up every once in awhile. Now my pop-up blocker works pretty well, but there's always some pop-ups that make it through. And so they have the bright lights. They have the bright colors, and they invite you to go to different Internet websites. If you want to get a better mortgage, they send you to this website.

And so pop-up blockers are something the advertisement world uses to get our attention. And signs also tell us about information regarding the world. Newspapers, for instance, use headlines, large headlines and a picture, as signs that grab our attention to what is going on in the world. Billboards are a big attention getter. They can tell us where we can go to eat. They tell us where we can go to sleep. If we are running low on gas, they can tell us where to go to get gas.

And so signs are often influential. They influence the way we think, what the world wants us to think. They can influence us. For instance, if you're feeling a little down about yourself, the latest Cosmopolitan magazine has a new diet program you can get on. In fact, I just heard about a diet program called The Hobbit Diet where you can eat 7-8 times a day and lose weight doing it.

The world has a particular idea of how you should be, and the world uses signs to influence you. TV sitcoms, for instance, they have a program that has the couple living together. What kind of sign does that tell us? What kind of sign does that show us? That living together is okay? Maybe that sex before marriage is okay? What about Sports Illustrated ? The highest selling time of the year they have is when they release the swimsuit issue for Sports Illustrated . What kind of message, what kind of sign is that for us? That sex is okay, that changing the way you dress is okay. Calvin Klein does that with the way he advertises certain clothing lines, that it is okay for you to reveal a little more of yourself than you normally would.

So the question is are we sign seekers? Yes, we are. Our whole world is based on seeing signs. But not only that. We are also sign selectors. We only see the signs we want to see based on what we perceive, what we want to see. For instance, we let the world dictate what gets through. Now I was talking about the computer about the pop-ups and I talked about pop-up blockers. My computer at home is a much newer computer, and it has a wonderful pop-up blocker on it. Not only does it prevent pop-ups from going through, but you can tell it not to allow certain pop-ups to get through. That's a wonderful tool. And so the question is what pop-ups are we using? Are we allowing the world to allow what we see, the different signs coming through? Do we allow the world to dictate what messages we are to see?

For instance, when we are driving and we see 35 miles per hour, now does that really mean 35 miles per hour to us? We know we could probably get 4 or 5 miles over 35. We could probably run about 40 miles an hour and not get a ticket, right? But I guarantee you, if you did get pulled over, I would not tell the police officer you didn't see the sign. That would not be a good idea. But the idea here is what are you letting through into your life? What signs do you let through?

There's a movie, a recent movie out, called Bruce Almighty and here is the main character, Bruce Nolan, is complaining throughout the beginning part of the movie that God is not with him. He is by himself. “God, you're not doing it the way I want you to do it.” And so finally his life gets to a point where he starts to ask God for a sign. And we take a moment here to see that clip:

“Okay, God, you want me to talk to you? Talk back. Tell me what's going on. What should I do? Give me a signal. Oh, I need your guidance, Lord, please send me a sign. Oh, what's this joker doing now? Okay, alright, I'll try it your way. Alright, Lord, I need a miracle. I'm desperate. I need your help, Lord. Please reach into my life. . . Oh, what the. . . where are you? I got you. Ah, ha. [Crash!] Oh.”

Bruce just didn't see the sign. And the people in our text didn't see the sign either. The people wanted something thrilling, something exciting, something sensational, a sign from heaven, they said. But it's interesting they requested this particular sign because, right before this text, Jesus threw out a demon that was possessing a man, causing that man not to be able to speak. And it's also interesting they asked for the sign because, the text before this particular gospel reading, there were multiple signs pointing to who Jesus is. There were miracles of healings. There were demon expulsions. There was even a resurrection from the dead. But all this occurred before our text. But still they were asking for a sign. And even more, they were still asking for a sign even though they could see the Old Testament prophecies were coming true with this Jesus. In Psalm 78:2, “I will open my mouth in parables.” Jesus spoke in parables. Isaiah 7:14, “The virgin will be with child and give birth to a son.” Isaiah 35:6, “The deaf will hear. Eyes of the blind opened. The lame will leap like a deer, and the mute will shout with joy.” Like Bruce, they couldn't see the signs. It wasn't making it through their pop-up blockers because, you see, they had their own idea of who this Jesus should be and they wanted Jesus to give them the sign they wanted.

How many times have we whispered to ourselves, “God, if you love me, you will do this.” “Lord, give me some kind of sign that you are still out there.” How many times do we find ourselves asking that same question, trying to get God to give us a sign? But Jesus tells the people in our text and also us today that “I give you the sign of Jonah.” Hum, the sign of Jonah?

During this period of Lent, we are going to go through the book of Jonah. And it's interesting that Jesus talks about the sign of Jonah because, if you remember the story, the word of the Lord came to Jonah saying, “Go to Nineveh .” Well, Nineveh did not get through Jonah's pop-up blocker because he felt the Ninevites did not deserve any grace from God. And so he ran the other way. And then he finds himself in the belly of a fish. And so the question is Jesus relates himself to Jonah? He gives us this sign of Jonah? What is that all about?

As we go through this journey during Lent, we will hear stories of deliverance. We will hear about salvation from imprisonment. We will hear about miraculous reappearings. We will hear about rescue and resurrection. Right now, the question is what is getting through our pop-up blocker? What pop-up blocker are we using in our daily lives? Are we letting the world run it? Or are we doing what Jesus directed the people to do? He said the sign of Jonah. He was pointing them to the word, to what the word said, His word. Asking for a sign, asking Him for a sign. When we ask for a sign, Jesus points us to His word. Why? Because His word is unchanging. It never changed. In this world, signs change. Things change. Back in the 1930's, it was not a good idea to reveal your ankle but, now days, you see a lot more than that. The world changes. The expectations change the signs.

But Jesus points to that which never changes, the word. What do we find in that word? We find things like baptism, where in baptism, the water and the word gives you the Holy Spirit, gives you faith. And that faith allows us to trust in God. And that sign there, do you remember in baptism at the beginning of the liturgy? “Receive the sign of the cross on your forehead and on your breast marking you as one redeemed by Christ crucified.” That has never changed. Whatever the world dictates it, that never changes because God's word, God's promise never changes. We also see it in the Lord's Supper where Jesus promises His body and blood in the Lord's Supper, and that never changes.

So what did Jesus do telling us the sign of Jonah? He's pointing us to that which never changes, scripture. It is through scripture we find out about forgiveness, about renewing, about His gift for us. And as we go through this journey in Jonah, we learn about the gift of forgiveness and what He has done for us.

As you see, we have the cross wreath here and I'm going to blow out the bottom candle because we know there are things that get through our pop-up blockers. There are things that influence us in ways God would not have us do. And so we remember, during this Lenten period, why Jesus went to the cross. Amen.