00:00:11.940 - 00:00:27.960

for years on the radio. Garrison keillor got smiles and laughs by saying that in lake Wobegon Minnesota, his hometown. All the women were strong. All the men were good looking and all the Children were

00:00:27.960 - 00:00:46.650

above average. Well, I think he's onto something . Many of us give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. We want the photographer to use the Doris day filter on the camera to soften our crow's feet

00:00:47.840 - 00:01:07.470

. We round up our moral balance sheet so that A C minus becomes a much more respectable B plus . The harder truth is though, we have real problems and sometimes we aren't all that bright. A

00:01:07.470 - 00:01:32.350

man suspected of arson and vandalism sent a selfie to police in lima Ohio, he had good reasons to do this because he thought the photo on his arrest warrant was unflattering. He was later arrested in florida

00:01:34.040 - 00:01:49.700

. A suspected car thief in Pretoria South africa got stuck in the car. He was trying to steal when the auto lock system on this luxury automobile engaged and trapped him inside. He was stuck for an

00:01:49.700 - 00:02:10.060

hour and a half shouting for help and when the owner of the vehicle returned, she helped by calling the police. Mhm. Now it's easy for us to laugh at the foibles of bumbling criminals. It's

00:02:10.070 - 00:02:30.730

easy to see the splinter in someone else's eye as jesus points out much harder though for you and me to see and own our flaws, our limits, our problems to be human means, to make mistakes

00:02:30.730 - 00:02:47.250

and to have limits which seem to multiply with age . And even though we value hard won experience, that really doesn't solve our problems. From the perspective of leading a life that matches up to God's will

00:02:47.740 - 00:03:06.710

. The problem with our inability to see our own limits clearly is that we can fail to realize how it actually stands with God and us and this brings us to our Gospel Today. We're in Chapter three

00:03:06.710 - 00:03:22.010

of Matthew, we here of Jesus Baptism by John in the River Jordan, we've reached the time of the liturgical year where we take a big jump from jesus in infancy, celebrated at christmas time and then

00:03:22.150 - 00:03:37.710

into jesus adult life. But despite this big jump in the timeline of jesus biography as it were, Matthew continues to drive home to key points about Jesus saying the same things he said in the first two

00:03:37.710 - 00:03:53.680

chapters of the Gospel. First of all, Jesus is actually lurking behind many parts of the bible, what we think of as the old testament Over and over. Matthew says that God does something in the

00:03:53.680 - 00:04:11.480

life of jesus to fulfill a prophecy. And then Matthew quotes a bible verse Second, Matthew keeps telling us that Jesus is just not some fella like everybody else. No, an angel tells joseph that mary's

00:04:11.480 - 00:04:31.910

child will save people from sin. Thus the baby should be called jesus or Savior. Jesus birth fulfills prophecy because Jesus is Emmanuel Hebrew for God with us . When the three foreign scholars A. K.

00:04:31.910 - 00:04:46.140

A. The wise men arrive from afar to inquire about Jesus, they're not just looking for a road trip and happen to like babies. No, there in search of the messiah, the king of the

00:04:46.140 - 00:05:08.020

jews and lo and behold that's jesus, these foreigners know that jesus is the messiah and the king, even though King Herod who thinks he's the king refuses to accept it. And once again, when jesus

00:05:08.020 - 00:05:20.870

mary and joseph flee this king, they do so . So the prophecy can be fulfilled. Out of Egypt. I have called my son, I will say this even though an esteemed professor of New Testament

00:05:20.870 - 00:05:39.210

is sitting in the 2nd row. So far as I can tell, the Holy family are primarily theological refugees for Matthew not political or economic ones. And Matthew tells us all that about jesus. And then

00:05:39.210 - 00:05:56.220

we get the big jump in the chronology and in relating jesus baptism, Matthew once again points out the distinctiveness of jesus. Jesus doesn't, why is jesus being baptized john the baptist doesn't want to baptize him

00:05:56.220 - 00:06:06.380

, it should be the other way around. But Jesus says go ahead, we need to do this . And then as he comes up from the water heavens are open, God's spirit descends and a voice

00:06:06.380 - 00:06:27.000

announces this is my son, the beloved with whom I am well pleased I have a confession to make . Don't get out your phones. It's not worth sharing on social media. My confession is we watch

00:06:27.000 - 00:06:45.750

a lot of television at my house and in some Tv series you can be sure that in every episode there will be an example of the flashing arrow. The flashing arrow is a rather heavy handed visual cue

00:06:46.440 - 00:07:00.420

. The camera might zoom in and linger on a piece of paper lying on the table, but we later discover that on that piece of paper is a series of numbers and once you decipher the series of

00:07:00.420 - 00:07:15.050

numbers, they're actually either the combination to save the longitude and latitude or the gps coordinates of something and that's the key to everything as unflattering as it may be for us. I think Matthew keeps telling us

00:07:15.050 - 00:07:32.930

that jesus is the son of god, jesus is the messiah, jesus is Emmanuel, jesus is the one with whom God is well pleased because we need a flashing arrow, we have trouble seeing and accepting

00:07:32.940 - 00:07:53.690

what God is up to in the life and the death and ultimately the resurrection of jesus as martin, Luther said so many times about God's work, this is offensive to human reason, which is Luther's old

00:07:53.690 - 00:08:09.550

fashioned way of saying on the surface, it just doesn't seem to make any sense in the past year or so. There's been a lot of national conversation about how siloed and separate americans have become from one

00:08:09.550 - 00:08:26.450

another. It's not just that the rich people live in this neighborhood and the poor people live in this neighborhood, it's that it's so easy for me to ignore people who don't think like me By cleverly watching

00:08:26.450 - 00:08:41.620

only one television station and having one radio station on my preset. The one that was for donald trump or the one that was for Hillary Clinton, the one that was for gun rights or the one that's

00:08:41.620 - 00:08:56.720

for gun control. The one that's pro life or the one that's pro choice, life is great. I don't have to listen to those people. You know the ones I mean they've got a lot of

00:08:56.720 - 00:09:16.680

funny ideas. They're very unreasonable. Uh huh. They're so deplorable. If you keep pushing this level of bubble of buffering, you end up living in a bubble that safely insulate you from any thoughts but

00:09:16.680 - 00:09:39.430

your own. But according to christian tradition, this insulation is precisely our problem. Saint Augustine went so far as to define sin as being curved in on ourselves and thus shut off from whatever God has in

00:09:39.430 - 00:09:58.420

mind. Saint Matthew tells us repeatedly that jesus is God's son so that we get what God is up to. God is bursting our little bubble for our own good. And once the bubble is burst we

00:09:58.420 - 00:10:16.760

can see that we aren't the center of everything. We can own our failures as real. We can see the tragic dimension of the world, and we do this without blowing it all off, by distracting

00:10:16.760 - 00:10:31.920

ourselves by taking drugs or going shopping, or playing video games, or all those other ways that we find to ignore God. Oh, yes! Once God bursts our bubble in jesus, we can see

00:10:31.920 - 00:10:52.100

that our neighbors are in the same boat as we are, there's good news here God comes to be with us, as the old hymn says, just as we are. This is my son, the

00:10:52.100 - 00:10:56.710

beloved with whom I am well pleased. That's great