Pilgrim Preaching

Vocation: Where Little Faith Meets Deep Water

Proper 14A Pentecost +9 | Matthew 14:22-33

During the week of August 7, 2011, summer chapel-goers at Luther Seminary heard five sermons on the story of Jesus walking on the water and Peter getting out of the boat to go to him. Here is one of the five. (By the way, while it is true that the Greek construction for "Come after (or Follow) me" in Matthew 4 is different from that in Matthew 14, I decided the difference did not preclude the use of both texts here.)

Not recognizing Jesus

I especially like this story for a few of its details. First, I like that the disciples do not recognize Jesus for sure right away. They see him and they cry out, “It is a ghost!”

I like this detail because most of the time, when Jesus is coming toward me, I do not recognize him right away either. Lots of people have more clarity on what God is up to in the world than I do. Throughout the years, when I have considered one call or another, one vocational path or another, I have never been able to distinguish in a conclusive way between Jesus talking and my own imagination.

• Am I interested in this new thing because it’s new, or because it’s a call? 
• Is whatever it is that is coming toward me frightening because it’s a miracle or because it’s a delusion? 

Around seminary we hear and tell call stories just about every other day, maybe more. I have almost always felt a little out of place in that conversation. I imagine that I have mistaken ghosts for Jesus and Jesus for a ghost more times than most disciples. 

The test

Peter comes up with a way to solve this problem. Like Gideon of old, trying to figure out if God was really calling him, Peter sets up a test for Jesus. Now a test is not necessarily a bad thing. In 1 John, we read, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (4:1).

In seminary, we call this kind of testing “discernment.” We discern a call by praying, talking with others, listening to advice, and yes, running some tests. “God, if you really want me to do this, I have to be able to sell my house.” “God, if I’m supposed to make this move, my kids are going to have to be OK with it.” “God, if I’m supposed to do this, you have to show me where the money is going to come from!”

“If it is you, bid me come to you on the water.” That is Peter’s test of Jesus. Jesus says, “Come,” and I imagine Peter thinking then, “I should have made the test harder.” Or, “Why didn’t I say, ‘Lord, if it is you, calm this storm!’?” The problem, of course, with asking for a sign has always been that you might get what you ask for. The house sells. The kids are fine with moving. The finances starts to look doable. Jesus, not a ghost, says, “Come.” 

Little faith and deep water

And now we have arrived at another detail I particularly like about this story. Peter answers what has turned into a real call from Jesus, a true imperative, “Come.” He steps out into the water. 

I sometimes feel like the only person on this campus who has never warmed to that quote from Frederick Buechner about vocation. Buechner wrote that “The place where God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” This is a really meaningful sentiment to many, and I suppose there is truth to it. 

I want only to point out that in our text neither deep gladness nor deep hunger seem to be at play. That place where Jesus calls Peter to is the place where Peter’s little faith and the Sea of Galilee’s deep water meet. In my own vocation, I do not know much about deep gladness meeting deep hunger.  I know rather more about little faith meeting deep water.

Christian vocation is a lifetime of stepping out of the boat and then thinking, “What did I just do?” or if the risk is something a whole congregation takes, it means stepping out of the boat and then thinking, “What did we just do?” What were we thinking? And what was Jesus thinking? Why would he call anyone to something so dangerous, so foolish? 

Always, my first reaction when hearing this story and getting to the part where Peter gets out of the boat is to think, “What a stupid thing to do!” “Stay in the boat!” I want to yell at him, every time. “Stay in the boat!” 

He never listens. 

Fishing for people

And then I realize that for all his foolishness, and all his little faith, Peter is onto something. He is going where Jesus is, deep waters and fierce storms notwithstanding, and I can understand that. I understand wanting to be where Jesus is. Not that it is safe or wise to get out of a boat on a stormy sea and take off across the water, but who said anything about safe? Since Jesus so rarely plays it safe, going toward Jesus in most any context is not safe... except that, finally, it is, because it’s Jesus, and Jesus is all about fishing people out of water. 

“Come,” he had said to Peter and Andrew along this same lake, some time before. “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people” (Matthew 4:19).

“Come to me,” he had said to a larger crowd on land, “all whose work is hard, whose load is heavy, and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:28f).

“Come.” It is the way we speak our Lord’s own invitation to his table. “Take and eat.” 

As we gather around this altar, we are heading toward Jesus. More to the point, Peter might say, Jesus is reaching out to all of us. Jesus reaches out to you here, and to me, with gifts as tangible to us as the hand of Jesus was tangible to Peter as Jesus fished for him, caught him around the wrist, and hauled him into the boat.

Answering the call of Christ to “Come” is as likely to leave you soaked and sputtering as it is to leave you “deeply glad.” Either way—both ways—the one who calls you already has hold of you. You and Peter... you’ll be fine.

On Rendering

24 Pentecost A | Matthew 22:15-22
October 16, 2005

Probably nine years ago, I heard this line in a sermon by Paul Palumbo: "Having been rendered to Caesar, Jesus renders us into the very heart of God." I wrote it down on the back of a bulletin. This week I finally had an opportunity to use it. That sermon, preached in the Luther Seminary chapel, follows.

Chapel sermons are strange for several reasons (the congregation members are all connected to a theological seminary; one is preaching before one's students, teachers and colleagues; the sermon is supposed to be about 8 minutes long!). I thought I had to throw out a few good things this time so here are some notes that wouldn't work in the sermon I preached but might work somewhere else.

1. Is it lawful? This question is posed to Jesus here but other occurrences of the question/issue are really interesting. Among the places it shows up in Matthew are (a) when Jesus' disciples are plucking grain on the Sabbath, and (b) when Jesus is about to heal someone on the Sabbath, and (c) when Judas throws the money back at the temple authorities after he repents of betraying Jesus. That last discussion of whether something is "lawful" struck me as a great tie between this text and the cross, but I couldn't get it to fit in my sermon.
2. Where do we fit in the story? In the sermon, I put the congregation in the position of Jesus, asking them to answer the question, "Is it lawful to pay taxes…?" from the perspective of a teacher, student or staff member at the seminary. It would be a different sermon if the congregation were asked to identify with, say, the questioners. Is there a way that we fuss about theological questions precisely so we do not have to face the real question about who Jesus is and how he challenges Caesar's authority?

One more comment about my experience of this text. I am just about the farthest thing imaginable from a prophetic preacher. I am a great fan of direct deposit and tenure. I like the prayer in Compline that says, "The Lord Almighty grant us a quiet night, and peace at the last." Mostly I like paying my taxes and being left alone. I don't naturally take to agitating or being agitated. Yet it seems to me that the powers and principalities really do make a play for all of us, and I wanted to announce to my hearers, "You do not belong to them." After I did that, I got a lot of feedback about how the sermon was courageous. Is it an "edgy" thing to call American an empire? I didn't think so, but I heard enough of those sorts of comments that I'm curious how a parallel between America and Rome might play in the preaching contexts of my readers.

Here's the sermon.

The Tension of Discipleship

14 and 15 Pentecost | Matthew 16:13ff.

I wrote a short sermon for the ELCA Convocation of Teaching Theologians on the Luther Seminary campus this week. I couldn't keep from talking about the fact that just after Peter's confession, Jesus starts talking about his death--so this might be fodder for 14 Pentecost or 15 Pentecost texts.

More than in any other gospel, in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus is a teacher and a trainer of teachers. We get long exegetical lectures from Jesus in Matthew—“you have heard it said… but I say to you….” There are handfuls of parables piled one on top of the other, and even a few private tutoring sessions between the Teacher and his disciples. The disciples are somewhat better students here than they seem to be according to Mark. Their scholarship—or something—is good enough in Matthew that by the end of the book, they receive a call to teach. “Go and make disciples of all nations,” Jesus instructs them, “baptizing them … and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.”

Even so, it sounds like Jesus starts out today's lesson with rather low expectations of his class.“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” One of my teachers used to try to put us at ease by saying about exegesis, “When in doubt, describe.” Describe what you see; say what you are hearing. So Jesus asks, “What are people saying about the Son of Man?” It is an easy question, and it works. The students are able to give answers: “Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” Basically the buzz around Jesus is that he is a holy man, a grumpy holy man from the look of this list, but a holy man just the same. He is in a line of those who know God and who want the people to be on better terms with God.

Then comes the next question: “Who do you say that I am?” This one is harder. We are not in the third person any longer, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” Here Jesus wants something different from a survey of the possibilities. The question is a call to commit to one answer. And it is personal, direct address: “Who do you people say that I am?” When in doubt, describe? Jesus is not asking for description now, but confession.

Peter confesses: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus says something like, “I know you didn't come up with that answer on your own” or even maybe, “I know you didn't get that answer from me.” “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you.” Another teacher I know once made the observation that the students for whom we would most like to take credit are probably the ones with whose formation we had the least to do. Jesus does not take credit for Peter's answer. Instead, he tells Peter, “You are blessed.” “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.”

The Father is revealing Jesus as Messiah and as Son. We usually think of it the other way around: the Son is the one who shows us the Father, but it works both ways. Here the Father is opening Simon's eyes so that when he looks at Jesus, he can see the Son of the living God.

So we have revelation, confession, commendation and then… an exhortation to silence. I hate it when that happens. Things were going so well. Everything was so positive. If I were writing the gospel, I would put the sending out of the 12 right here, when the energy of a great class was still in everyone's muscle fibers. “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons,” I would have Jesus say right here. Or maybe he could seize the moment by saying to Peter and the others right now, “Go and make disciples of all nations.” Instead, we get, “On this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it” and then, “Do not say anything to anyone about this.”

And then it gets worse. Jesus exhorts the disciples to silence, and then starts tutoring them on what will happen to him in Jerusalem. Suffering, humiliation, death, resurrection. The next thing out of Peter's mouth is, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”

Just like that, the student's fortunes have changed. One minute he is the recipient of divine revelation and the next minute he is getting the same rebuke that the devil received when he tried to tempt Jesus at the start of his ministry. “Get behind me, Satan!”

This is the tension of discipleship. Peter understands, and then he doesn't understand at all. One moment he is walking on water, the next, he is sinking, the moment after that, he is saying with the other disciples to Jesus, “You are the Son of God.” At the end, the disciples all promise to stand by Jesus, and Peter pledges that even if he must die with Jesus, he will not deny him; within an hour or two, the disciples are all gone except for Peter, who stays in proximity to Jesus long enough to claim with all the persuasiveness that his sailor's vocabulary will offer, “I do not know the man!” A rooster brings him back to himself and he weeps bitterly. Peter is rock and stumbling block at almost the same moment, and he is blessed with just enough self-awareness to know both things are true of him.

He is, in this respect, representative of those who follow Jesus. If you have not known yourself to be both brilliant and clueless as you follow Jesus, fierce and craven, faithful and running for your life at almost exactly at the same time, you are not paying attention. Jesus does not say he will build his church on a rock such as Peter because the man's insight is so great or his faithfulness so remarkable or even because Jesus has any particular hope that Peter will become, over time, more faithful and less frightened. Jesus chooses this particular lump of clay because Jesus sees God at work in him. “Blessed are you, Simon, son of John, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father in heaven.” God is at work in this one, and when Jesus sees that, he gets on board with it.

Our hope for the sharing of the good news of Jesus Christ is not that Peter or the rest of us who are fishing for people will get better, clearer, louder, quieter, more trusting, or less cowardly but that God will keep revealing himself and his merciful and just rule through his Son to human beings quite apart from their goodness, clarity, trust and courage. I am not glorifying Peter's vices here, or yours or mine. I am only saying that neither doubt, nor fear, nor simple-mindedness nor the incapacity to know when to speak and when to be quiet have stopped the Father from revealing the Son, or stopped the Son from embodying the Father's reign on earth as it is in heaven. “I thank you, Father,” Jesus says, “that you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will” (Matt 11:25f). God is at work, making the Son known, because that is what God wants to do. Such is his gracious will. Peter and the rest of us see the revelation of God, then lose it, then catch another glimpse, then make our confession, then take a step back from it. God can work with that. In fact, it is God's gracious will to work with that. On such rocks as these, Christ builds his church.

Letter to a Canaanite Woman

13 Pentecost A | Matthew 15:21-28

(Last fall, I preached this sermon at a Luther Seminary chapel service. I adapted it from an earlier post I made here.)

Dear Canaanite Sister,

You go girl! I've never seen anyone talk to Jesus like that. And this from someone who so clearly does not belong. No one has called anyone a Canaanite for centuries. You are a foreigner—or you would be a foreigner if it were not your home turf that Jesus had wandered into. What's more, you are a Canaanite woman in the middle of a group of Jewish men. You are so out of place and so out of time and so exactly where your daughter needs you to be.

I heard you first, before I saw you. You were screaming, crying, crying out, wailing in that Emergency Room that doubles as a road through Tyre and Sidon . So completely foreign it all was. What were you doing there? What was Jesus doing there? You would tell him what he was doing. "Have mercy on me, Son of David," you said. "My daughter… my daughter is tormented by a demon."

You were screaming when you said this, hysterical we would say. It was hard to hear, harder to watch. You followed those men, still crying after them. The disciples wondered if the demon didn't have hold of you, too. You kept shouting. They asked Jesus to dismiss you. He ignored them. But he ignored you too, and some of us who know him found his silence even more disturbing than your cries.

Then he spoke, and things got worse. "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel ," he said. At that point, had I been you, I would have gotten angry. "Sent only to Israel, huh? Then what the hell are you doing in Tyre? Need a map, Mister Omniscient Son of God?"

Did you teach the Teacher? "Lord, help me," you said, instead of fussing about just who was lost and who was out of place. To which you heard, "It is not fair to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs."

You were kneeling when he said this, existing low where it is possible to smell exactly what the Rottweiler had for lunch. Had you fallen at his feet just to stop him in his tracks? Maybe, but your kneeling looked like the posture of worship. It looked like you were praying when he said you were a dog. And heaven knows, “Lord help me!” is a prayer.

"It is not fair to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs." We still cannot quite believe our Jesus said this. We are so embarrassed that Jesus would call anyone a dog, and we are so nonchalant about God keeping promises to God's children—unless, of course, we are the children of God to whom the promises were made. But when Jesus spoke of the children and their bread, he was not talking about most of us any more than he was talking about you. You knelt before him, and he as much as said, “You are right where you belong, dog.”

I wonder if it was not your place below the action that told you what to say next. "Yes Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." I'm down here, Lord, with the dogs, looking for just a little. A little… “My daughter…. Have mercy…. Crumbs."

Did you teach the Teacher? I think you did. Because of you and your fierce need, God's own Son himself came to see his life's work as bigger than before. What he had not thought to look for in anyone like you, he saw: faith. He saw your tenacious conviction that he could help, and amazed, he did.

I have thought that fear makes it impossible to imagine things. "Perfect fear casts out all imagination," I have thought. But you were afraid—you must have been afraid of the demon and of your daughter's suffering and afraid of all those foreign men and all their insults. You must have been afraid, yet you could see a new thing—healing—at the same time. “Woman,” Jesus said (choosing, finally, a better name than dog), “Great is your faith.” You imagined healing before it happened and you showed it to the Healer.

Walking by faith, crying out by faith, kneeling and talking back to God by faith like that, what might we see?

•  Can faith declare God's work for us in places where we don't belong?

•  Will faith point us, with you, to that stranger on the road—out of place himself—who certainly can help?

•  Will it break for us the loaf that is enough for children and for dogs.

•  Might your story help us grasp these things even when we're terrified?

You taught the Teacher. What will you teach us?

Duh-scipling

10 Pentecost A | Matthew 13:1-9; 18-23

Have you ever tried over and over to log into a web site, only to read the directions one more time and see that you have been entering your data (again and again) in the wrong spot? Or have you found yourself unable to make any sense of a set of driving directions—and then you discover you have the wrong starting point in mind? A few years ago, the word "duh" made it into American English vernacular for just such moments.

My single exegetical insight into this week's gospel text has to do with understanding. In Matthew, when Jesus is explaining the parable of the sower, he talks about understanding the word:

"When anyone hears the word about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches what was sown in his heart; this is the seed sown along the path" (Matt 13:19, NET).

"But as for the seed sown on good soil, this is the person who hears the word and understands. He bears fruit, yielding a hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown" (Matt 13:23, NET).

Neither Mark nor Luke records an explanation from Jesus that says anything about understanding the word. "Getting it" is a preoccupation only for Matthew. Matthew would have liked Philip's question to the Ethiopian eunuch as Philip caught up to his chariot: "Do you understand what you are reading?" (Acts 8:30).

By this point in Jesus' ministry, people watching and listening to him have all sorts of data about him. They have heard the Sermon on the Mount, his Dream Speech of life in the Rule of God. They have seen healings, even one reported at a distance—and that of a Roman centurion's slave. The disciples have witnessed the stilling of the storm. Pharisees have witnessed him eating with sinners. Crowds of people have heard him pronounce the forgiveness of sins and seen him heal on the Sabbath.

"Do you understand what you are reading?" Do the witnesses understand what they are seeing? Here are a few reactions to Jesus reported just before and after the parable of the sower:

• The Pharisees conclude that it is by the ruler of demons that Jesus casts out demons (Matt 12:24).
• Some of the scribes and Pharisees ask for a sign (Have they been seeing nothing for the last 8 chapters?) (Matt 12:38).
• Jesus' family is a little anxious, trying to get word to him (Matt 13:46ff).
• The hometown crowd takes offense at him (Matt 13:57).

It's as if we are halfway through the semester and just about everyone has failed the midterm. Do you understand? Does anyone understand what they are seeing? In another context, the apostle Paul calls Jesus the wisdom of God and then says, "None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory" (1 Cor 2:8).

Jesus responds to this lack of understanding by  s p e a k i n g  v e r y  s l o w l y to the duh-sciples. "Hear, then, the parable of the sower," he says before he explains the parable to them. "Let me draw you a picture. Is a parable too artistic of a medium for you? How about an allegory then? Let's try one-for-one correspondence. I'm not really talking about seeds here; I'm talking about the word of the kingdom of God."

In Mark's version, Jesus quotes Isaiah as a way of saying that he is speaking in parables in order to hide the secrets of the kingdom, as if the parables were a kind of inside-baseball for the disciples only. Yet in all the synoptics—Mark included—Jesus keeps at his audience. "Do you understand? Well, then, let me explain it again." He is sometimes an impatient teacher (cf. Matt 16:9 and Mark 8:17), but he is ever the teacher.

What is Jesus trying to teach? For starters, he is teaching that in the midst of rulers of this age from Herod the Great to Pontius Pilate roiling at the news, still, "the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matt 4:17; cf. 13:20). He is teaching that persecutions are not to be feared and that persecution or no, "you are of more value than many sparrows" (Matt 10:26-31; cf. 13:21). He is teaching that "life is more than food, and the body more than clothing" (Matt 6:25; cf. 13:22).

And he keeps teaching. This Teacher bears a striking family resemblance to the loquacious One who called worlds into being with the Word and just keeps on talking through the prophets, the scriptures and even your voice and mine. Throughout the gospel, the Word made flesh keeps teaching with his speech and actions. He himself is seed cast abroad on the earth, sent by the Sower whose word does not return void but accomplishes what was intended for it. Thorns, the rulers of this age, dry and hardened minds and hearts: all sorts of things threaten this good seed and its seedlings. Still, it bears fruit.

Blessing as Freedom

Epiphany 4A | January 31, 2005
Matthew 5:1-12

In his article, "Matthew's Beatitudes: Reversals and Rewards of the Kingdom," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 58/3 (1996) 460-79, Mark Allan Powell argues for a two-part structure to the beatitudes. The first four are "reversals for the unfortunate." The second four are "rewards for the virtuous." I like Powell's sense of the structure of this text, but instead of reversals and rewards, I prefer to talk about freedom in the beatitudes.

The first four declare freedom from

• despair (blessed are the poor in spirit),
• grief (blessed are those who mourn),
• want (blessed are the meek) and
• injustice (blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness).

The second four declare freedom for

• healing (blessed are the merciful),
• integrity (blessed are the pure in heart),
• peace (blessed are the peacemakers) and
• faithfulness (blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake).

Powell's reading of "blessed are the meek"—that the meek are those in economic need—may not be a usual reading of the text, but he makes a strong argument for it. The meek are not "the humble" but instead, "the humiliated." They are lowly not because they mean to be virtuous but as a result of having been flattened by the powerful.

I summarized "blessed are the merciful" with the word healing because "to show mercy" in Matthew is often to provide physical healing (9:27; 20:30, 31; 15:22; 17:17). However, mercy in Matthew is bigger than just physical healing and involves activities as varied as giving alms, eating with outcasts and forgiving sins.

Will any of this preach? I'm not sure I'll preach on this text, but if I did, I might talk about how the beatitudes begin to paint a picture of what the world looks like when the Lord's Prayer (also part of the Sermon on the Mount) is answered: "thy kingdom come; thy will be done…" we pray. Jesus is saying, "In the kingdom, in that place where God's will is done perfectly, these people are blessed by receiving freedom from lack and freedom for steadfast love." This description of the kingdom is not just philosophical or hypothetical. Just before the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has said, "… the kingdom of heaven has come near" (Matt 4:17). The beatitudes start to describe what the reign of God will look like as God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven, an eventuality that is at hand.

Do Not Be Afraid

Advent 4A | December 19, 2004

Matthew 1:18-25

Angels in the Bible often announce their arrival with the words, "Do not be afraid." This leads some of us to conclude that whatever angels look like, it must be frightful.

The angel in Joseph's dream also says to him, "Do not be afraid," but in this case, the problem is not the fearsome appearance of the angel. In Matthew 1, the angel is not allaying Joseph's fears about seeing an angel, but rather about marrying a pregnant woman. "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit" (1:20).

As the gospel continues, Jesus will have more to say about fear and courage. The words, "Do not be afraid," are spoken at least five more times in the gospel of Matthew, and four of those times they are on the lips of Jesus. He speaks these words to the disciples during a storm (14:27), to Peter, James and John during the Transfiguration (17:7) and to the women outside the empty tomb (28:10). To the disciples he is about to send out to teach, preach and heal, he says, "Have no fear" of those who have called the master of the house Beelzebul and will surely also malign those of his household (10:25). "Do not be afraid," Jesus says, reminding those he is sending out of the One whose eye is on the sparrow. "You are of more value than many sparrows" (10:31).

Matthew 1:18-25 proclaims several gifts, any one of which could be the center of an Advent sermon filled with hope and joy: "she will bear a son...he will save his people from their sins... you will call him Emmanuel, God with us." Alongside all these—alongside the gift of a baby who bears the very presence of God to humanity is another gift, a gift that the one who is God with us will keep offering throughout his ministry: freedom from fear.

The people who will whisper behind your back cannot hurt you, Joseph. Do not be afraid.

The storm tossing your boat, O disciples, will be stilled by the one who walks toward you. Do not be afraid.

To those sent out in Jesus' name: the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is greater than your visions of being tongue-tied when you attempt to give an account of the hope that is within you. It is greater too than the experience of being ridiculed when you manage to offer such an account. Do not be afraid.

Do not be afraid even of death, or of a world turned upside down by resurrection. The risen Lord keeps saying what he said before, "Do not be afraid." God is with us, and "God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but rather that the world might be saved through him" (John 3:17). God is with us for good.

"Are you the one...?"

Advent 3A | December 12, 2004

Matthew 11:2-11

Jenee Woodard writes about this week's gospel text and the effect of Advent: "I continue to think about the dead-end ways I find myself wanting to write 'happily ever after' in terms that are long-sense dead or outgrown, and in doing so, I miss the really good stuff." Did John have in mind a way of writing "happily ever after" that had to die if he was to see Jesus for who he was? "His winnowing fork is in his hand," John had said of the one who would come after him. Now he sends messengers to Jesus asking, "Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?" In reply he gets a list of activities different from the work of separating wheat from chaff: "the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them" (Matt 11:5).

It's fair to say that Jesus did not match up point-for-point with John's expectations. I can see that, and I can imagine a sermon starting from that place: "There goes John again, saying, 'Bring it on!' to destruction, but look: Jesus is more interested in healing than torching, more interested in raising the dead than smiting the wicked." I get how John got Jesus wrong—or at least how he would come to need the clarification he seeks. But how are we getting Jesus wrong? The harder sermon to write is one that investigates how Jesus does not match up point-for-point with my and my hearers' expectations.

Doubtless some hearers still expect the incineration of wickedness that John anticipated, and they may be as eager for it as John seems to be. This is what I hear, for instance, in the observation that all manner of illnesses (from HIV/AIDS to lung cancer) are God's judgment on human sin. "What can people expect who do not clean up their act?" Now surely God hates and judges human sin. God hates human sin because God loves our neighbor and the rest of creation as much as God loves us and anything that hurts the neighbor or the earth therefore torques God out of shape. Yet in the face of some believers' surety about other people's sin and God's judgment on it, I am tempted to say, "Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?" (Matt 7:3).

In all fairness, the crowd I usually hang out with is way too polite and politically correct to sound much like John the Baptist when they see human sin. My crowd's problem is not that we, like John, think the Messiah will burn the chaff with unquenchable fire. Our problem is that we do not expect much of anything to change with the Messiah's advent. It is not that we think he will be vindictive and we are just too gleeful about that—or at least it is not usually that. Instead, our problem is that we think the best the Messiah can do is take the edge off. Jesus says to John's messengers, "Go and tell John what you see and hear: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them." Instead of hoping for, watching, expecting such things as these, we look for a little analgesic. Jesus, could we just have something for the pain?

The Messiah's mission is so much bigger than that. This one means to open the eyes of the blind, to raise the dead, to give the poor a real future and a hope. In conversation with a psychotherapist recently, I commented that a mutual friend was unlikely to change some particular habit: "After all, he is over 50 years old," I said. "How much change can there really be at that age?" The therapist disagreed. "Of course people can change after 50," he said, and I realized what a cramped vision of the future my comment had revealed. I who am in the business of big dreams (for a living, I read a set of documents that ends with the risen Jesus saying, "See, I am making all things new" [Rev 21:5])—I had not even considered that someone who could open the eyes of the blind could also change a middle-aged human's mind, heart or habits. John's expectation of the Messiah might have been too vengeful; ours is likely too small.

I have read about Paul's thorn in the flesh (2 Cor 12:2-10), so I know that the Messiah is not a mere cosmic bellhop come to earth, ready to elminate pain and maximize pleasure. Yet John the Baptist's question to Jesus in this week's text, along with Jesus' answer, has had the effect of opening my eyes to some true and formerly unexpected messianic activity in my life and the lives of those I know well. Go and tell John what you see and hear: One of us is walking again after being laid low by grief for years on end. Another can actually hear it and believe it now when someone says to her, "I love you." Another of us is beginning to feel that he doesn't have to yell, "Unclean!" or do a dozen equally drastic things to keep people at a distance. "The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them." Could this one be the Messiah?

Jesus and the Peaceable Kingdom

Advent 2A | December 5, 2004

Isaiah 11:1-10
Matthew 3:1-12

I'm pretty sure that if I were preaching, I would begin with Isaiah's peaceable kingdom. Just painting that picture for people might be enough. "The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them" (Isaiah 11:6). Everybody lives, and no one needs to devour anyone else in order to do it. That is the dream.

I think that was the dream Jesus lived. He did not come breathing fire, even though both the OT and Gospel readings this week might lead us to expect that. Isaiah says about the one raised up from the stump of Jesse, "He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked" (11:4b), and John the Baptist concurs: "The chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire" (Matthew 3:11). But never in his ministry does Jesus burn anything. He does get angry: he calls the Pharisees "whitewashed tombs" (Matthew 23:27), looking good on the outside but full of death, and he accuses those entrusted with the temple of turning it into a den of thieves. Yet he does not send anyone up in smoke. Everybody lives, even people like that fox, Herod (Luke 13:32), and especially people like the little girl who had died while he was listening to a tiresome sick woman talk about her female problems (Mark 5:22-43) and Lazarus (John 11). Everybody lives, and no one has to devour anyone else in order to do it.

The one who actually comes as the clearest fulfillment of Isaiah's word decides that the only way to get to the peaceable kingdom is to live out its meekness here and now, no matter what. He does not breathe fire on anyone. He does not lay waste. He seeks out sinners; he touches and heals sick people; he eats with both Pharisees and tax collectors. He is himself a lamb lying down in the midst of wolves.

Should he have been more careful? Would the fire have been better than the towel and the basin, better than the bread and the cup? With his life and death, Jesus gave us a window on the peaceable kingdom. As he lived it, that kingdom was not a place without conflict or even a place without large animals having sharp teeth and evil intent. Even so, he lived the peace Isaiah dreamed of, and after those large animals had done their best to devour him, God said, "No. Everybody lives, and no one has to devour anyone else in order to do it."

The Element of Surprise

Advent 1A | November 28, 2004

Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44

In Monty Python's sketch, "The Spanish Inquisition," a man is being questioned in a way that surprises him and he says, "Mr Wentworth just told me to come in here and say that there was trouble at the mill, that's all - I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition." As if on cue, inquisitors burst into the room and one of them says, "NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise…surprise and fear…fear and surprise…. Our two weapons are fear and surprise…and ruthless efficiency…. Our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency…and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope…. Our four…no… Amongst our weapons…. Amongst our weaponry…are such elements as fear, surprise…. I'll come in again." The inquisitors exit the scene to re-enter and begin the speech again.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. "If the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into" (Matthew 24:43). The Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

It has always struck me as unfortunate that the primary metaphor of Christ's return that sticks in most of our minds is the metaphor of a thief in the night. Why is the coming of the Son of Man likened to something that fills us with dread? Is there not some kind of good surprise we could imagine? In Luke 12, Jesus tells his hearers to be like servants waiting up for their master's return from a party. The good surprise there is that the returning master will cook for his servants and serve them. By contrast, even Matthew's wedding feast stories are not such great news: bridesmaids are left outside (Matt 25:1ff), and someone who gets in at first is tossed out later for lack of proper outerwear (Matt 22:11ff).

So the metaphors are not helping us here, yet the return of Christ is in fact good news. Upon our Lord's return, the petitions of the prayer he taught us will be finally, definitively answered: God's kingdom will have come and God's will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That is what we are looking forward to. About such a time it is true, I suppose, that we don't expect it. "The meek shall inherit the earth." Right. Like I so expect that. Jesus says, "Keep awake." In other words, "Expect that."

In Matthew's gospel, we hear quite a lot about Jesus as "God with us" (1:23), present with us in tough times (18:20) and for the long haul (28:20). One of the benefits that the ongoing presence of Christ offers the church is the chance to live in the end time ahead of time. We have the presence of Jesus with us even before he comes again in glory. "Lo, I am with you always," he said. His presence heals, reconciles, calls to account, opens the door to the banquet, pays workers all the same, and on and on, ahead of the time of his return to judgment. Paul's words in Romans are all about living "ahead of time," anticipating with our lives that way of life that will be ours when Christ returns.

Maybe the surprise, when Christ returns, will be that he was here all along. Maybe the surprise will be that, ahead of time himself, he has been calling, gathering, enlightening and sanctifying the meek and all the rest of those who bear his name. Come, Lord Jesus.