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1st Corinthians 1:10-18 & Matthew 4:12-23
January 22nd, 2017
When Jesus comes to the soon-to-be disciples on the shores of the Galilean Sea, it is no idle setting for Matthew. The Sea of Galilee, researchers have discovered, was an island in the Roman conquest of Palestine and Judah. It was so far away that it was left alone, and became one of the few places that people who lived a subsistence lifestyle could actually make it. They could feed themselves on fish and a decent harvest. But then Herod died, and gave his holdings to his sons, Herod Antipas getting the Galilean area to rule. And Antipas was ambitious. And the best way for a factional ruler in those days to “get ahead” was to make nice with the Emperor, to curry his favor…kinda like putting your large diplomatic contingency up in the hotel owned by the President, before you meet with him, if such a scenario existed.
So Antipas built a city and called it Tiberius, after the emperor. And he built it on the Sea of Galilee. And he needed taxes to do it. So guess what happened right around the time that Jesus came a’preachin? Those same fishermen were no longer able to make it. And the back and forth that is the routine of government went back…or forth…whichever. That is the environment into which Jesus steps. And when he reaches out to these fishermen, he is telling them two things. First, that God wants God’s people to be treated justly, for everyone to treat everyone else with kindness and fairness…and two, that the kin-dom will not come only in political systems, but first in our hearts. Yes, Jesus will still march on Jerusalem, mocking the Roman authorities with a Palm Sunday donkey ride. He will overturn money-changing tables and loudly protest the religious figures who stand in collusion with the twisted values of the empire. But he will never ask his disciples to promote him for office, he will never accept the title, “savior”, and he will never promise to, “Make Jerusalem Great Again!”
What he will do instead is to teach, to model, to live the ideals he puts forward and he begins with this – repent. Turn around, he instructs these new disciples, for when you start to follow, the kin-dom comes near. Set aside the ways of life that have gotten you to this place and follow me. Do not accept what the empire tells you. Don’t go down that road of fighting to swing the pendulum back to your side. Work for justice. Speak out for the discarded and the unclean. Give to the poor and heal those who are sick, but know where you place your faith.
After an inauguration on Friday, followed by walking in one of the many satellite Women’s Marches all across this country, rebellion ought to be heavy on my mind…revolution, resistance, even retribution could be found on display, especially if that’s all you wanted to see. But what I experienced was the kind of dedication to each other, the “common good”, the ethic of love and compassion on full display, even if it came with some attitude, feeling, of course, a little backed into a corner. It was an overwhelming feeling of solidarity, yes, and also, at least for me, a conviction for the days to come. I did not, by the way, see a single sign that read, “Surrender.” And yet here we are, first with the words of Paul to another church, a long way away from us, and then with Matthew’s account of the very early ministry of Jesus, what some call his inauguration, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, where he bids Peter and Andrew, James and John, to follow him…to give up all they have, all they are, to change their lives…to surrender.
We live in a divided country, to be sure. We all have our bubbles, and we define our own “basket of deplorables” and get those labels set quickly so we know who goes where. We fraternize with “our” people and we create what is almost a system of purity that makes it damn near impossible for us to actually listen to one another and really interrupts the power of the Gospel. And, we must admit, that division starts in us. And there is no one better for speaking to, or creating, division than a prophet.
The prophetic tradition has a long history in the Judaism from which Christianity grew. From Isaiah to Amos, prophets have been called forth to speak against religious and political establishments. They have been called forth to speak the truth to wherever the power is and to maintain a sense of justice, or what we might call accountability.
Listen to Paul chastise the Corinthians, which seems to be one of Paul’s favorite hobbies. This is Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of what we heard earlier…
“I’ll tell you exactly what I was told: You’re all picking sides, going around saying, “I’m on Paul’s side,” or “I’m for Apollos,” or “Peter is my man,” or “I’m in the Messiah group.”
I ask you, “Has the Messiah been chopped up in little pieces so we can each have a relic all our own? Was Paul crucified for you? Was a single one of you baptized in Paul’s name?”
Paul calls out the beginnings of power in what is undoubtedly a small church in Corinth. He knows that what all that labeling and sorting does is pit us one against the other by abusing power, and it defies the Gospel work, the work that Paul will call foolishness just a few sentences later. For the way of salvation, he will assert, doesn’t come from our great wisdom, knowledge, education or, the implication is, even from our baptism. It comes from God’s grace, shown to us by living how Jesus lived. The Gospel, Pauls says, isn’t a matter of how smart you are, or how well you craft your arguments. It is about how you love.
On my good days I’d say I manage to let the Gospel influence, let’s say, 25% of my decisions. Maybe I’m being humble…or amazingly optimistic, but the rest of the time I’m pretty sure I think just like the empire, trying to win the competition, to beat the opposition, to crush the wrongdoers. Like the fishermen that Jesus gathers from the Galilee, I haven’t quite left the way of life that flaunts itself in front of me, offering me a pseudo-righteousness, a justified anger, and the shallow comforts of consumerism. Like Jesus called to the fishermen that if they wanted to save their life they had to lose it, so, too he calls to me, asking me to follow him in ways that still seek to shelter the poor, comfort the weak and to love…yes, even love your enemy.
Almost immediately after this passage in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus goes onto a hillside and preaches a public sermon, that we call the Sermon on the Mount. When he says to Peter and Andrew, James and John to follow him, the sermon spells out what he means – Blessed are the peacemakers and the merciful. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. These words haunt me as I protest. They stalk me as I yell obscenities at the TV. They convict me as I feel the fear and anger and hatred swell up in my heart. Jesus, in his beckoning of the fishermen to come and follow him, teaches them not to counter the empire with imperial values, and he does that instruction immediately…two sentences after getting them to follow. The empire wants us to find someone to blame and to engage in this battle. It needs that kind of enemy. It wants us to pin all evil on one man and make him the epicenter of our fury, rather than looking into our own hearts and making peace when and where we can. Much like the struggle against racism, we cannot make strides until we accept that racism lives in us, and we cannot defeat the empire without knowing that we are the empire…and then listening to the words supposedly spoken on the side of a mountain by Jesus, calling us to a different way of being in the world…listening to them, and sometimes, when needed, surrendering to them. For these values are not, at least for me, always a first inclination.
It could be easy right now for us to see nothing but strife and turmoil in front of us, but I’d like to suggest that the challenges we face are opportunities. They are opportunities for us to be faithful, for us to spread the good news of God’s great love for all people, without exceptions. This is a chance to be prophetic, to speak truth to power, to insist that those without a voice are heard and to organize ourselves to resist the abuse of power. This is a time for prophets. Oh, but prophecy has this nasty habit of calling out our own hypocrisy. While it demands of us some resistance, it insists that how we do this resistance and rebellion matters. It matters a great deal. Dr. King reminded us, we cannot drive out hate with hate, nor can we tolerate injustice anywhere, for it threatens justice everywhere. So, just like the relentless teachings of Jesus, we have to live in the tension of, “The time is always right to do what is right” and, “We must learn to live together as brothers (and sisters) or perish together as fools.” We need each other, even the people who voted for this President, and we need to lift up the “better angels of our nature” as we struggle to resist a return to the demonic lie, the anti-Gospel that “might makes right.”
The power of God, the “message of the cross” as Paul called it, doesn’t look like the power that we understand, the power that we protest with words and actions of resistance and revolution. Our anger does not produce God’s righteousness, as the writer of the book of James reminds us, but instead builds more walls, and participates in the politics of division all the more. Yes, we ought to be clear that there is darkness. The darkness that Matthew portrays is not darkness that God had anything to do with, and, while we’re on the subject, God doesn’t elect leaders, either…it’s a human creation…an all too human creation. It is human beings who organize armies to oppress people, who build racial bias into systems, who name some clean and some not, who will sometimes raise winning over the values of decency or fairness, equality or respect. And, we must shamefully admit, this sort of behavior is highly contagious. The more people build walls or fight, the more people feel the need to build walls and fight.
So this may be our chance, both for ourselves and for others, to speak against a doctrine of judgment, a vision of a vengeful God and to speak and act on behalf of a God of grace and love. This is a chance to say there is a better way, and to remind ourselves that instead of placing all of our hopes in a person, or a party or a system, we must rely instead on the God who stands beside us, who resides, we all affirm, and rely on the practices of Jesus and whose values are not found in a law library or the endless debates about doctrine or the right way to be baptized, nor even in the Constitution. They are found in the disconcerting, paradigm-shifting, offensive directives of the Beatitudes.
I know it doesn’t look good. I know that our future will bring things we have to shake our heads at, things we will be shocked by and things we will have to endure. And it also brings us a chance to be messengers of the Gospel, yes, even to evangelize this good news that we are children of God, beloved by God and accepted by God. So go, go into your life and be light, let your little light shine. Be bold and prophetic and know that some of that spotlight will come back on you…and when it does, be a model in showing how to take criticism. And remember your faith, remember your values and where they have come from, and where you have come from. When they ask who sent you, when they ask who you follow as you write your name on a Muslim registry, or donate to Planned Parenthood or volunteer at the Equality Center you tell them: Jesus. I follow Jesus. And watch this world turn.
Amen.