Haðubrand felt his bones
creak as he stood and knelt, stood and knelt, listening to the priest
drone on in Latin in the little wooden church. He didn't want to be
there. But he knew he had to reconcile himself to it. It was the
dawn of the year 786, and Haðubrand was a Saxon tribesman, living in
what today we'd call northern Germany. He hadn't grown up in church
– unless you count ones he'd torched. So how had he found himself
in one now?
If you'd asked Haðubrand,
he might have started the story in his teen years, when Pope Gregory
III wrote to his Saxon people. Thanks to the efforts of the
missionary Boniface, who in southern Saxony had chopped down a sacred
oak after challenging their god Thunær
to a fight, some Saxons had already forsaken the religion of their
ancestors for this Christianity. Pope Gregory wanted them to “walk
in him, rooted and grounded and confirmed in the faith, abounding in
the works of grace.” He called on them to “depart … from the
service of idols, and come, worship the Lord our God who made heaven
and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and you shall not be
ashamed.” Five or six years after the letter, the Frankish king
Pepin invaded Saxony and brought some missionaries behind him. Some
Saxons had gotten baptized, mainly out of fear. They didn't think
much of it.
Almost a decade passed.
Haðubrand and his people had gotten fed up. They'd crossed into
Frankish territory and burned over thirty wooden chapels. Haðubrand
remembered the flames, the smoke, the plunder. It had satisfied him.
But Pepin certainly wasn't happy. With bishops and soldiers, he
came into Saxony to wreak revenge, taking prisoners and not leaving
until the Saxons took oaths of peace with him – and with his God.
So many were baptized. Yet, for a while, for much of Haðubrand's
adult life, things kept on as they always had been. He lived the
life of a Saxon, served the gods of the Saxons, same as before.
Then came one January,
fourteen years ago. Some Saxons had traveled north on an expedition,
to help burn down a church built by the English missionary Lebuinus
four years earlier, around the time the Frankish king Pepin had died.
They had no idea what wrath they were unleashing. For Pepin had
left the Frankish kingdom to his aggressive son Charles – we know
him today as Charlemagne – and Charles retaliated by invading
Saxony that year and burning down their shrine, the Irminsul, the
great tree trunk that linked heaven and earth. Haðubrand felt
crushed. During the coming years, his late forties, when he could
still do some fighting, he tried his hand at raiding Frankish turf
and defending against Frankish invaders. But they kept losing to
King Charles' armies. In 775, one by one, the Saxon tribes sued for
peace. The next year, of course, they all turned back to that
old-time religion, and tried to retake all their forts and castles.
But they failed, and in terror they surrendered and promised to do
what the king said – and be baptized into his religion. And many,
motivated by political security, went through the motions and did
exactly that.
So it went, year by year.
But Haðubrand put more of his faith in Widukind, a great Saxon
warrior who urged them to fight on, to resist both the politics and
the religion of the Franks. Although Widukind had fled for safety to
the Danes, still he inspired his people to fight against Charles and
the Franks. The Saxons plundered their way onto Frankish land, they
burned churches and monasteries – all they could find. The year
after that, the Franks returned to Saxony. Charles recruited
missionaries to come convert the Saxons. But in 782, when Widukind
came back and riled up all Saxony with him, they fled the land.
Still, Haðubrand had
little more fight in him; he laid aside his sword and sæx.
His people fought hard, but Charles counterattacked and beheaded
thousands of prisoners, and Widukind barely escaped. Three more
years they fought. Finally, Charles broke them. And Widukind
entered negotiations. Which ended with Widukind, the prophet-hero of
the Saxon pagans, being baptized on Christmas Day in 785.
So what choice did that
leave the other Saxons? As missionaries flooded in and built
churches all over Saxony, Charles passed laws saying that any Saxon
who refused to be baptized and attend to Christian rituals would be
put to death. So Haðubrand surrendered. That same cold day, a
missionary priest submerged him in the nearest river, after he'd
sworn the vow: “I forsake all the devil's works and words, Thunær,
Wōden, and Saxnōt,
and all those fiends that are their companions.” And so Haðubrand
was baptized and resentfully began to attend the Mass. In his eyes,
and in King Charles' eyes, that made Haðubrand – and all Saxony –
Christian now.
But what should we say
about Haðubrand and those other Saxons baptized by force of law in
those days? Was his heart in it? In being dipped in the river, was
he truly placing his faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior? Did
it begin, for him, a life of discipleship? And if our answer is no,
what might that have meant for his soul?
You see, all Saxony was
brought to baptism by terror of the Frankish armies during the war or
by terror of the Frankish laws after the war. And some, to be sure,
had been taught and persuaded by missionaries either before or since.
But in the summer of 792, many Saxons, testing the political winds,
abandoned their professions of Christian faith and again tried to
rebel. One chronicle tells us, “They demolished or burned down all
the churches in their land; they chased out the bishops and priests
set over them, attacking some and murdering others; and they
altogether reverted to idolatry.” Four years later, one of King
Charles' top priests, an advisor named Alcuin of York, wrote a letter
to a friend and saw what had gone wrong. And here's what Alcuin
said:
The
miserable race of the Saxons so many times wasted the sacrament of
baptism because they never had a foundation of faith in their heart.
… Man is able to be forced to baptism, but not to faith.
And so it was. A couple
decades later, there was still a need to convince Saxon nobles to
really commit their hearts to Christ, to be captivated by him and
desire him. So one poet wrote the Heliand:
a collection of songs in the Saxon language, retelling the story of
the Gospels in a fresh Saxon way, urging them to live 'with a clear
mind' free from divided loyalties. But, of course, one of the first
characters we meet in those songs is a man named John, who introduces
that message. And here's how the Saxons heard John's story:
There
in the wasteland, the word of God, the divine voice of God, came to
him powerfully and told John that he was to announce Christ's coming
and powerful strength throughout this middle world. He was to say
truthfully in words that the heaven-kingdom, the greatest of
delights, had come to those heroes' sons, to people, to the soil of
that country....
“Become
clean,” he said. “The heaven-kingdom is approaching the sons of
men. Now in your hearts, regret your own sins, the loathsome things
you did in this light, and listen to my teaching, turn around in
accordance with my words! I will gladly dip you in water, but I do
not have the power to take away your sinful deeds so that by the work
of my hands you could be washed of your evil accomplishments. …
Your minds will long be merry when you forsake the power of Hel and
the company of the loathsome ones, and seek for yourselves God's
light, the home up above, the eternal realm, the high meadows of
heaven! Do not let your minds doubt!”
(The
Heliand,
Song 11, trans. G. Roland Murphy)
Don't let your minds
doubt. For the past several weeks, we – like those Saxons, perhaps
some of our ancestors, hearing those words twelve hundred years ago –
have been trying to grapple with John the Baptist's preaching and
example. And it hasn't always been easy. John was a challenging
sort of man. He doesn't just tell us what to do. He does more than
that for us, better than that for us: He raises questions we have to
answer; and in the wrestling, in the answering, we learn what to do
in a way that doesn't just pass in one ear and out the other.
Because we have to come to it ourselves.
Nowhere is that clearer
than in his confrontations with the Pharisees and Sadducees. We
heard last week, if you were with us, about how this was probably an
official delegation, coming from the Jewish Supreme Court, to inspect
John's ministry and decide if any action needed to be taken to crack
down on him. These Pharisees and Sadducees assumed that they had no
personal need of his baptism, no personal need of what it represented
– that they were there to offer a solution to Israel's problem.
But we heard, last week, John tell them that they were the heart of
Israel's problem – and they needed
to radically convert, turn to God as fresh people, and let God begin
growing a life of fruitful gratitude out of their hearts (Matthew
3:8). Nothing less would do.
For
John told them they were “a brood of vipers”
(Matthew 3:7) – a poisonous presence in the bosom of Mother
Jerusalem, and imitating their venomous father, the devil (cf. John
8:44). And, needless to say, that did not resonate with the
Pharisees and Sadducees. Their first instinct is to answer back that
they have an honorable father – no one less than Abraham is their
father (cf. Matthew 3:9). And in the Pharisees' and Sadducees' eyes,
that makes all the difference – and it means they must be safe.
It
might at first be a bit hard to follow their reasoning. Why does it
matter if they're descended from Abraham? But it helps to know that
there were strains of Jewish thought where the merits of Abraham –
the goodness and blessing he acquired – was passed on to his Jewish
descendants, and served as sort of a buffer for Israel to make God
overlook some of their personal unworthiness. So, for instance, one
rabbi is recorded as saying that, because Abraham was so faithful
that he cut the wood to sacrifice Isaac, God rewarded his faith by
one day cutting the sea so that Israel could escape from Egypt.
Abraham's faith became merit passed down to the nation. Another
rabbi said that, because Abraham was so faithful that he saddled up
his donkey to fulfill God's will in taking Isaac to be sacrificed, it
counteracted the time centuries later when Balaam the pagan prophet
saddled up his donkey to try to go and curse Israel. Again,
Abraham's faithful obedience became merit that, when passed down to
Israel, became a buffer to keep them safe and in God's good graces
(Genesis Rabbah
55.8). Some Jewish traditions held that Israel would have their sins
ignored by God out of love for their father Abraham, and one rabbi
even said: “Notwithstanding all the follies that Israel commits and
the lies that they utter in this world, Abraham is of sufficient
merit to win expiation for all
of Israel's deeds when they are scrutinized” (Pesiqta
de Rav Kahana
23.8).
So
that's what John is calling out in the Pharisees and Sadducees –
that line of thought, that attitude. They were thinking, in effect,
that what John was saying to them didn't matter. Israel didn't need
his new fresh start; God's people weren't in any real danger of
destruction. Abraham was their shield. And so Pharisee and Sadducee
alike didn't feel they had to sweat it so much. In effect, what they
were saying to John was that they could get away with outsourcing
the faith business
to Father Abraham – that, because Abraham was so faithful and they
had Abraham as their father, they would be the heirs of his faith,
they would reap the benefits of all the merits he earned, and so they
could safely skate into salvation on Father Abraham's coat-tails, as
it were. “Listen
to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the LORD:
Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from
which you were dug – look to Abraham your father and Sarah who bore
you...”
(Isaiah 55:1-2).
But
the problem, as John sees it, is that these Pharisees and Sadducees
aren't exactly chips off the old block. If “Abraham
[their] father”
is “the rock
from which [they] were hewn,”
nonetheless they don't look different from your run-of-the-mill
pebbles you could find anywhere in the world. “If
you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham
did”
(John 8:39). “Do
not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father,'
for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children
for Abraham”
(Matthew 3:9). A link to Abraham – the very thing the Pharisees
and Sadducees were hanging their whole hat on – was something
commonplace. And so the Pharisees and Sadducees vastly overestimate
their bargaining power; they think they have more to bank on than
they do. Isaiah's words on looking to the rock were for Israelites
who sought the Lord – but these Pharisees and Sadducees were so
convinced he'd been found for
them, that they themselves were not seeking. See, they can't get
away with outsourcing their faith.
And
neither can we. Not any more than the Pharisees and Sadducees
refusing John's baptism. Not any more than defeated Saxons
reluctantly accepting baptism out of fear. Like Alcuin said, it's
all pointless without “a foundation of faith in [our] heart.”
Personal faith – faith that links my
heart to God, your
heart to God – cannot be substituted for trying to tie something
else to God and outsourcing the faith business to that thing. And
yet 'nominal Christianity' – that is, Christianity 'in name only' –
is exactly what we get when we try to outsource the faith business.
And it is the greatest plague in the churches of our land today, and
maybe – though God forbid it – a danger for some of us here.
“Even now, the
axe is laid to the root of the trees”
(Matthew 3:10).
Because,
like the Pharisees and Sadducees, some of us might try to outsource
faith to our ancestry or heritage or upbringing. “I must be a
Christian, because my mama was a Christian and my papa was a
Christian; grandpa was a Christian and grandma was a Christian. So
that must make me a Christian. I was raised that way, so that must
be what I am.” Don't you know people who think that way? That
they were born into a Christian family, so that makes them
Christians; their parents believed, so they assume they themselves
believe? I've met plenty. But it just doesn't work like that.
Because my dad's faith can't save me, and my mom's faith can't save
me, and my upbringing can't save me, and yours can't save you,
either. God is able from these stones to raise up kids of good
Christian families. There's no safety in that for you. “Even
now the axe is laid to the root of the trees.”
But
then, we might try to outsource our faith to our environment, to our
nationality. “I must be a Christian, because I'm a citizen of
these United States of America, and America is a Christian nation,
and so as an American, I must be a Christian, and since I belong to
'one nation under God,' I must be safe, I must be okay.” That was
the way it was sometimes in the Middle Ages – “I belong to such
and such a people-group, like the Franks or Saxons; that people-group
is Christian; therefore, I am Christian, and I must be safe, I must
be okay.” And you'd think we'd know better, but we still sometimes
go around assuming that being an American makes us better Christians
than if we were Russian or Venezuelan or French or Liberian. We
still hang our hats on America and all its assorted mythologies, as
if they were what saves us. But you cannot safely outsource your
faith to your country – belonging to a 'Christian nation' (if there
were such a thing) would carry no weight in God's sight. He is able
from these stones to raise up American citizens. There's no safety
in that. “Even
now the axe is laid to the root of the trees.”
But
then, we might try to outsource our faith to our words and
propositions. “I must be a Christian, because I agree with the
sorts of things good Christian teachers say. They tell me that God
exists, and I agree with that; they tell me that Jesus was the Son of
God who died on the cross and rose from the dead, and I agree with
that; they tell me that the Bible is from God, and I agree with that.
So because I agree with all those sentences, I must be a Christian;
and since I agree with those sentences, I must be safe, I must be
okay.” That has so often been what we think it means to be a
Christian – acknowledging some facts. And, to be fair, you
couldn't claim to be a Christian without seeing those truths. But
they aren't enough. If you believe those things, “you
do well. Even the demons believe – and tremble”
(James 2:19). God is able from these stones to raise up people who
nod at all the right strings of letters and spaces and punctuation
marks. There's no safety in that. “Even
now the axe is laid to the root of the trees.”
But
then, we might try to outsource our faith to our membership status.
“I must be a Christian, because I got wet that one time. I must be
a Christian, because I said a prayer one time. I must be a
Christian, because my name is on the church records as a member of
this congregation. I pay my dues, my name is on the list, I went
through the necessary actions to join, so I must be a Christian. And
since my name is on the list, I must be safe, I must be okay.” As
long as we can truthfully put in our obituaries, 'So-and-so was a
member of this church,' we might figure that's what will decide our
eternity. But the church record books have no particular standing in
God's court – they're pale imitations at best of “the
Lamb's book of life”
(Revelation 22:17). God is able from these stones to put names on
our church's membership rolls. There's no safety in that. “Even
now the axe is laid to the root of the trees.”
But
then, we might try to outsource our faith to our attendance or our
activity. “I must be a Christian, because here it is, Sunday
morning, and I'm in a pew, just like most Sundays. I must be a
Christian, because I try to treat other people well, I try to be nice
and follow all the rules. I must be a Christian, because I want to
be told how to be a better person, and then I try to do it, I try to
be a good person. And since I'm here in the pew and I try to do nice
things in life for my country and my family and my neighbors, I must
be safe, I must be okay.” And that's what we do. We put in our
hour on Sunday morning, we lead a nice and conventional middle-class
American life, and we figure we're good, because why wouldn't we be?
It's not like we're sinners in need of a real Savior, right? Or so
we think. But attending Sunday worship services can only help you
grow when there's something alive in you to
grow. And too often, we're prone to assume there's life in us
without checking. We assume that activity means life. But it
doesn't. The Pharisees had loads of religious activity, but inside
were full of dead men's bones (cf. Matthew 23:27). The Saxons
submitted to going through the motions of religious activity, but
inside nursed paganism and rebellion. And for all our attendance,
for all our religious activity, for all our moral contributions to
the community, we may be full of nothing but death if we do not
personally have Jesus Christ alive in us. If he's alive in us, he'll
be active, no doubt. But we can attend and be active and yet have no
safety. “Even
now the axe is laid to the root of the trees.”
For
here's the thing: Not one of those is a substitute for personally
having “a foundation of faith in [your] heart” – not one of
them. Not your upbringing. Not your environment. Not your
agreement. Not your membership. Not your attendance. Not your
activities. You can have all those things and not
be okay. Not if the center of who you are isn't linked to Jesus.
Not if your trust isn't in him and your loyalty isn't with him.
Because what saves us? Nothing and no one but Jesus Christ –
“there is
salvation in no one else”
(Acts 4:12). And if each of us is not personally united
with him by faith in the heart of who we are, faith that leaches out
into all areas of our lives, then what makes our condition any
different from the refusing Pharisees or the reluctant Saxons?
For,
as Paul the Pharisee came to realize, Abraham is the father precisely
of those who imitate his faith – he is “the
father of all who believe”
(Romans 4:11). So we must
have Abraham-style faith: trust in the God who speaks life where only
death was possible, trust in a God of resurrection. On such a God,
each of us must lean; in such a God, each of us must hope; to such a
God, each of us must turn. We must
stand in personal union with Jesus Christ through a foundation of
faith in my heart and your heart. We cannot outsource it. There is
no other way than faith that unites us personally with Jesus and all
he's done and all he is. And nothing less will do, for there is no
such thing as secondhand holiness, no such thing as safely outsourced
faith.
So
I ask you, church, each of you: Where is your
heart? Do you “seek for
yourself
God's light,” as the Saxon Gospel poem said? Is it “in your
heart” that you take action, and not just in outward motions or
outsourced functions? Are you yourself personally committed to
Christ – to “walk in him, rooted and grounded and confirmed in
the faith, abounding in the works of grace”? Is faith a personal
thing to you – not privatized, but involving an encounter between
Christ and you,
rather than Christ and something else?
I
hope that none of us here are outsourcing our faith, like some
Pharisees did. I hope that none of us here are reluctantly going
through the motions, like some Saxons (and Franks) did. I hope that
each of us here is a disciple, personally invested in Jesus Christ
from the core of our hearts. Because if you trust in him with all
your heart, if you live from a faithful heart as his disciple, then
you are safe – and more than safe. So let us be true heirs of
Abraham, the Father of the Faithful, and live out our salvation –
for “the
righteous shall live by faith”
(Habakkuk 2:4). Amen.
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