Group picture
Commentary
Object:
I was in the home of a church member the other day where I saw a marvelous family portrait. The picture had been taken on the occasion of a fiftieth wedding anniversary, and the entire family had gathered for the occasion. The celebrating husband and wife were seated in the center of the picture, flanked by their adult children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren. It was a magnificent full-color illustration of God's design.
From fifty years earlier, of course, there was a smaller frame featuring a black-and-white photo of a twenty-something couple on their wedding day. They were young, happy, and hopeful. Now, these decades later, the larger, color portrait bore witness to some of what their life and love together had produced.
Looking over the family portrait was an interesting study in genetics: hairlines and body types, eye color, and facial expressions that persisted through generations. Now that original young couple from a small town had spawned a small army of descendants, who were normally scattered all over the country. But on this occasion, they had come together for a special event and for this group picture.
The church gets a small taste of such a portrait every Sunday morning. We don't necessarily come from all over the country, but we do gather as family for a big event. We trace ourselves back to a few common ancestors. And as we look across the faces, while we see a lot of variety, there are a few distinguishing characteristics. Not features like noses and ears but other family traits that have persisted through the generations.
As we consider the two New Testament passages assigned to us this week, we'll have a good opportunity to recall our ancestors in the faith and to see the hallmarks of this family of followers of Jesus.
Isaiah 9:1-4
The more time I spend in God's word, the more aware I am of certain recurring themes. We read one day what appears to be an interesting teaching in one particular place in scripture. Then, some weeks later, we hear that teaching echoed in a different voice and place in the Bible. A year later, we recognize several other witnesses to the same truth. After another year, we discover that the teaching is actually a motif that reverberates all through his word. And, finally, after a few more years, we realize that that interesting teaching is actually a natural extension of the core truths and central proclamations of all scripture.
The tone and content of this brief excerpt from the prophet Isaiah are an example of this phenomenon for me. Isaiah paints a quick portrait of people living in -- seemingly engulfed by -- darkness. But then God shines a light into their midst, and their shackles are broken, as they burst forth in rejoicing.
The passage itself is a familiar one to us -- perhaps especially because Matthew quotes it early in his gospel, as we shall explore later. Beyond the familiarity of this specific passage, we are further struck by the great familiarity of the truths that it proclaims.
Isaiah is one of those prophets whom we lump together under the rubric "judgment prophets." That moniker suggests bearers of bad news: pain, suffering, defeat, destruction. And Isaiah does include exactly some of that sort of message, both for Jerusalem and for her enemies.
Yet judgment is not the only message Isaiah brings, for judgment is not the whole will of God. Judgment is only a means to an end, and God's end is always good. Hence, we have in the midst of this judgment prophet's preaching the good news for "those who were in anguish" and "those who lived in a land of deep darkness."
The large -- and, we discover, central -- theme of God shining his light into darkness is introduced on the very first page of scripture. The condition of the universe "in the beginning" is dark, chaotic, and empty. It's a terrifying image. Then God speaks into it, and his word is a command: "Light!" Such was God's first order of business in creation: to penetrate and dispel darkness with his light.
The Old Testament people of God continued to experience and bear witness to that truth about the Lord. When he plagued Egypt with darkness, he still provided light for his own people (Exodus 10:21-23). The Psalmist ponders that "even the darkness is not dark to (God)" (Psalm 139:12). Elsewhere in Isaiah, the Lord promises that he will "turn the darkness into light" (42:16). In similar hope, Micah declares, "When I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me" (Micah 7:8). And King David testified about his own experience that "the Lord turns my darkness into light" (2 Samuel 22:29 NIV).
The New Testament writers are even more explicit on this point. John begins his gospel by bearing witness to "the light of all people (which) shines in the darkness" (1:4-5) and the one who is "the light of the world" (8:12). Likewise, Paul (Ephesians 5:8; 1 Thessalonians 5:5), Peter (1 Peter 2:9), and John (1 John 2:9) all remind their churches that they have been saved from sin's darkness and are called to live in God's light.
When our people hear this excerpt from Isaiah, therefore, they should also hear a great deal more. For what Isaiah declares is a tone that reverberates throughout scripture, and a motif that is echoed from the dawn of creation to the Christian's daily life.
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
Even a casual reading of the epistles suggests that Corinth was something of a problem church for Paul. We see, in the 29 chapters of correspondence we have with them, evidence of both moral lapses and theological controversies; relational problems within their congregation, and relational problems with the apostle Paul; issues in both home life and church life. Yet, in the providence of God, that congregation's many issues have been used for the instruction of countless individuals and churches for 2,000 years. For so much of what we know and teach about the gifts of the Spirit, the nature of the church, the wisdom and foolishness of the gospel message, marriage and divorce, church unity, church discipline, church contributions, Paul's biography, the Lord's Supper, love, and the Resurrection are owing to what Paul wrote in response to the Corinthians' questions and problems.
Here, early in the letter, we watch Paul cope with one of Corinth's internal problems, which must have been heart-breaking for him. Evidently, there were some divisions forming within the Corinthian congregation. And those several sects gravitated around and identified themselves with four different significant persons within the Corinthians' experience: Paul himself, Apollos, Cephas (or Peter), and Christ.
It comes so naturally to us to take sides. We instinctively look at so much of life through an us/them lens. As competitive siblings, as schoolmates on the playground, as cliques in middle school or high school, and as colleagues in the workplace, we draw our lines and identify our teams. We form allegiances that bind us to these people here and alienate us from those people there. Of course, almost anything that we human beings do in the rest of life, we also do in the church.
That last detail was the heartbreaking part for Paul. After all, some things simply don't belong in church. And inasmuch as the Lord himself prayed for the unity of his followers (see John 17:11-23), such divisions and in-fighting are profoundly disappointing.
Of course, many of our people will not know who Cephas is unless we translate for them. Apollos is likely unknown to most of them (see Acts 18:24-28). So, because the characters and situation in Corinth will seem distant and unfamiliar, we may be dismissive or condescending about the problem Paul was addressing.
Yet, as the writer of Ecclesiastes noted, "There is nothing new under the sun" (1:9). And what was an issue in Corinth remains an issue today. The names have been changed, but the pattern persists. We do not segregate ourselves from one another over Cephas and Apollos anymore. We, instead, say that we are of Luther or Wesley. Of John Calvin or Roger Williams. We say that we are mainline or evangelical. Conservative or liberal. Traditional or contemporary. We are charismatic, reformed, fundamentalist, emerging, and on and on. It comes so naturally to us to take sides!
Now I come from a particular tradition and serve in a particular denomination. I am not part of a crusade in my little corner of the world to combine all of the churches in town into a single fellowship. Yet I find that I am well-rebuked by Paul, for his question to the Corinthians may very well remain his question to us: "Has Christ been divided?" For even within the walls of our individual churches, as in ancient Corinth, we experience divisions that betray the unity for which Christ prayed.
We split along lines of politics, style, or taste. We overlook the great faith, love, and salvation that unify us, while allowing ourselves to be divided over issues that are peripheral. While Jesus said that the hallmark of his followers should be their love for one another (John 13:35), the world looks at us and sees us drawing the same lines and taking the same sides as they do everywhere else.
The apostle Paul's appeal to those ancient believers in Corinth, therefore, still has great relevancy and a pointed challenge: "That all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose." Or, as the ancient hymn says it: "Let strife among us be unknown, let all contention cease… brought here together by Christ's love, by love are we thus bound."
Matthew 4:12-23
Our gospel lection is only twelve verses long; yet it features four significant events.
First, there is Jesus' response to the news about John the Baptist. We may assume that the ugly developments surrounding John were no surprise to Jesus. But news does not need to be surprising in order to be sad -- or unsettling.
We gather that Jesus had been in the southern part of Palestine -- the region of Judea, where Jerusalem itself was located -- for the occasions of his baptism and his temptation. That seems to have been the neighborhood of John's ministry, and we discover later that Jesus is fully aware of what Jerusalem will eventually hold for him (see Matthew 16:21; Luke 13:33). Now is not that time, however. So, perhaps to avoid precipitating events prematurely, Jesus withdraws from that southern area where the fervor was greater and the stakes higher. He returns to Galilee and that region becomes the familiar backdrop for his early ministry.
Second, there is Jesus' move within Galilee. We are perhaps more conscious of his family's early moves than this one. The trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem when Mary is pregnant with Jesus, the escape to Egypt when he was still a baby, and the eventual return to Nazareth when he was a boy are all more prominent on our radar screen. But here Matthew reports that Jesus made a move of his own. It seems that he made a deliberate choice to leave his hometown and adopt for himself a new hometown: Capernaum, on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee.
Matthew understands the move as a fulfillment of prophecy, though he offers no explanation of motive for it on Jesus' part. Based on Jesus' later experience in Nazareth (Matthew 13:54-58) that, perhaps significantly, is portrayed earlier in the story in Luke (4:16-30) and immediately followed by a trip to Capernaum (4:31) -- it may be that Jesus' departure from Nazareth is his own version of shaking the dust off one's feet (Matthew 10:14).
Third, there is the thumbnail summary of Jesus' early preaching. "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near" is the message. It is unmistakably reminiscent of Matthew's summation of John the Baptist's preaching, as well (3:1-2). Similarly at the end of this passage, Matthew characterizes the message of Jesus' preaching as "the good news of the kingdom."
Our people may not give much thought to John the Baptist. And when they do think of him, I suspect that they envision him having a very different look and style than Jesus. It may be instructive, therefore, to observe that they preached the same message.
Meanwhile, a great many church folks pay little attention to the "kingdom" theme in the gospels. They vaguely characterize Jesus' message being about love and forgiveness, but they miss the prominence of this "good news of the kingdom." Yet this is what John came preaching, followed shortly by Jesus. A quick survey of Jesus' teachings reveals that ten different parables in Matthew alone are explicitly designed to illustrate what the kingdom is like. I would argue that, in many churches I have known, the kingdom theme is much less prominent in the pulpit than it is in the scriptures.
Finally, there is the calling of the first disciples. Of the four events reported in this passage, this is perhaps the one that gets the most attention in our pulpits and churches. This, it seems, is where we come in, for we naturally identify with Peter and Andrew, James and John. They are our first ancestors in this life of following Jesus, and so we take their experience as a symbol for our own, and we cherish their response as the example for us to imitate.
Many sermons are rightly born out of this scene. We note the setting of the call: that it is in the midst of everyday life for the people involved and that it is the Lord's initiation. We observe that the call is specifically to follow -- not merely to believe, to agree, or to support. We see, also, that there is a corresponding change in the new disciples' activity and purpose: to become a new sort of fisherman. We are struck by the immediacy of the disciples' response, which distinguishes them from the hemming and equivocating of the would-be disciples. And, finally, we notice that following Jesus meant leaving behind things, activities, purposes, and people.
Application
We look to the New Testament for pictures of our ancestors. Not our biological forebears, of course, but rather our forefathers in the faith. Those ancient portraits illustrate for us the family features that are meant to characterize Christ's followers still today. And those characteristics are our focus as we consider this week's excerpts from 1 Corinthians and from Matthew.
Matthew's account of Jesus calling the fishermen does not give us any insight into the first disciples' ages, physical appearance, or personality types. It does, however, show us the essential attributes of a disciple: the willingness to drop and leave behind anything in order to follow Jesus and the reflex to do it immediately.
Stalling, equivocating, clinging -- these are the traits of the many would-be disciples in scripture and through the ages. But his true followers have a different look. They stop, drop, and follow when he calls. And that is the brand of discipleship to which we aspire.
We turn the page from that scene by Galilee, however, and we come to Corinth. At first blush, we think their picture is not so flattering as Matthew's portrait of those erstwhile fishermen. These Corinthian Christians seem to be tugging at and struggling with one another. With all their divisions and debates, their look is much less becoming.
In point of fact, however, Peter et al. were not so much better looking than the Corinthians. We recall plenty of gospel instances in which those first disciples were marked by fear, disputes, little faith, misunderstandings, and worldliness. The decision to follow Jesus, after all, is not the same thing as entire sanctification.
So the excerpt from 1 Corinthians is a helpful contribution to our group picture. There's no point in air-brushing the family photo and pretending something exaggerated and false.
Professor Earl B. Marlatt of Boston University Theological Seminary captured the mixed-bag followers of Jesus in a hymn. He recalls Christ's call to the first disciples and their response this way: " 'Are ye able,' said the Master, 'to be crucified with me?' 'Yea,' the sturdy dreamers answered. 'To the death we follow thee.' "
"Sturdy dreamers" who say yes to Jesus. From Galilee to Corinth, from your local church to the saints on the other shore, this is the look -- the family trait -- that has persisted throughout the generations.
Alternative Application
Isaiah 9:1-4. "People who walk in darkness." So often, you can't see people in the dark. Everyone has some experience with this. Because human beings lack the night vision of nocturnal animals, we have all been surprised at some time or another by a person whom we didn't see there in the dark. Whether it was walking into a dark room, down a dark hallway, or on a dark street, we've all experienced the uncomfortable surprise of not initially seeing someone in the dark. And when we suddenly realize that they are there in the dark, it surprises us. Often it scares us.
What is true of physical darkness is perhaps even more true of other kinds of darkness. Emotional darkness. Relational. Spiritual. So often, you can't see people in the dark. In this case, I don't mean that we can't see others when we are in the dark. Rather, I mean that we so often cannot see others when they are in the dark.
How often have we been surprised to learn that some colleague has been admitted to an alcohol rehabilitation center or that the couple down the street is separating? And how often has the news of a suicide been met by friends and associates saying, "I had no idea"?
So often you can't see that people are walking in darkness. But they are. They're there, whether we see them or not. And those people badly need to "see a great light."
That great light, according to Matthew, is Jesus and his message. Since we cannot reliably see who may be walking in darkness, it behooves us to share him and his message with everyone we know, with everyone we meet.
Preaching the Psalm
Schuyler Rhodes
Psalm 27:1, 4-9
German playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote in one of his songs that "magic fear puts the world at your command." He was referring, in this, to the ways that governments instigate fear in the population so that they might be manipulated to do things they would not otherwise dream of doing. The glaring example, of course, is the behavior of the German people in the Holocaust. Through expert manipulation the people were made to be afraid, and in their fear they would do -- and did do -- horrific things.
From television advertisers to military recruiters and back again, the manipulation of fear is used to control peoples' actions in countless ways. Afraid of a terrorist attack, the Congress of the United States passed a law called the "Patriot Act." The problem is that most of the members of Congress never even read the legislation! They voted out of fear. They were afraid of another attack; afraid if they voted against a law labeled as "patriotic," they themselves would seem unpatriotic. The whole pathetic enterprise was rooted, not in reasoned leadership, but in fear.
From the McCarthy era to the leering racial stereotypes of Japanese during the World War II, and certainly throughout our history as human beings, fear has been used to control and manipulate people. Hence, Brecht's idea that fear was magic. You make people afraid, and you can get them to do just about anything.
There is, however, an inoculation against the epidemic of fear in the world. There is a way to keep from being shuffled and pushed by the purveyors of fear. There is a surefire remedy to this pervasive dysfunction of fear in our lives.
The antidote to fear is trust in God. That's right. Fear is the disease and the cure is our ability to place our trust in God. As the psalm says, "The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?" We are easily manipulated because we place our trust in the wrong location. We trust in governments and ideologies, in philosophies and political parties, and without exception they fail us. But if we trust in God, we need not fear. If we trust in God, the "powers of this world," as Paul would call them, cannot push us around or maneuver us with fear.
For people of faith this is a pivotal concern. We cannot revive a church when we are shaking in fear. We cannot step forward in faithfulness when we are fearful of change or new direction. And we cannot share the good news of new life in Christ when we still fear the cross.
"Perfect love," as First John reminds us, "casts out fear." Let us, then, place our trust in the Lord. Let us cast out our fear and root ourselves in the salvation of our God. For indeed, if we place our trust in God, of whom shall we be afraid?
From fifty years earlier, of course, there was a smaller frame featuring a black-and-white photo of a twenty-something couple on their wedding day. They were young, happy, and hopeful. Now, these decades later, the larger, color portrait bore witness to some of what their life and love together had produced.
Looking over the family portrait was an interesting study in genetics: hairlines and body types, eye color, and facial expressions that persisted through generations. Now that original young couple from a small town had spawned a small army of descendants, who were normally scattered all over the country. But on this occasion, they had come together for a special event and for this group picture.
The church gets a small taste of such a portrait every Sunday morning. We don't necessarily come from all over the country, but we do gather as family for a big event. We trace ourselves back to a few common ancestors. And as we look across the faces, while we see a lot of variety, there are a few distinguishing characteristics. Not features like noses and ears but other family traits that have persisted through the generations.
As we consider the two New Testament passages assigned to us this week, we'll have a good opportunity to recall our ancestors in the faith and to see the hallmarks of this family of followers of Jesus.
Isaiah 9:1-4
The more time I spend in God's word, the more aware I am of certain recurring themes. We read one day what appears to be an interesting teaching in one particular place in scripture. Then, some weeks later, we hear that teaching echoed in a different voice and place in the Bible. A year later, we recognize several other witnesses to the same truth. After another year, we discover that the teaching is actually a motif that reverberates all through his word. And, finally, after a few more years, we realize that that interesting teaching is actually a natural extension of the core truths and central proclamations of all scripture.
The tone and content of this brief excerpt from the prophet Isaiah are an example of this phenomenon for me. Isaiah paints a quick portrait of people living in -- seemingly engulfed by -- darkness. But then God shines a light into their midst, and their shackles are broken, as they burst forth in rejoicing.
The passage itself is a familiar one to us -- perhaps especially because Matthew quotes it early in his gospel, as we shall explore later. Beyond the familiarity of this specific passage, we are further struck by the great familiarity of the truths that it proclaims.
Isaiah is one of those prophets whom we lump together under the rubric "judgment prophets." That moniker suggests bearers of bad news: pain, suffering, defeat, destruction. And Isaiah does include exactly some of that sort of message, both for Jerusalem and for her enemies.
Yet judgment is not the only message Isaiah brings, for judgment is not the whole will of God. Judgment is only a means to an end, and God's end is always good. Hence, we have in the midst of this judgment prophet's preaching the good news for "those who were in anguish" and "those who lived in a land of deep darkness."
The large -- and, we discover, central -- theme of God shining his light into darkness is introduced on the very first page of scripture. The condition of the universe "in the beginning" is dark, chaotic, and empty. It's a terrifying image. Then God speaks into it, and his word is a command: "Light!" Such was God's first order of business in creation: to penetrate and dispel darkness with his light.
The Old Testament people of God continued to experience and bear witness to that truth about the Lord. When he plagued Egypt with darkness, he still provided light for his own people (Exodus 10:21-23). The Psalmist ponders that "even the darkness is not dark to (God)" (Psalm 139:12). Elsewhere in Isaiah, the Lord promises that he will "turn the darkness into light" (42:16). In similar hope, Micah declares, "When I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me" (Micah 7:8). And King David testified about his own experience that "the Lord turns my darkness into light" (2 Samuel 22:29 NIV).
The New Testament writers are even more explicit on this point. John begins his gospel by bearing witness to "the light of all people (which) shines in the darkness" (1:4-5) and the one who is "the light of the world" (8:12). Likewise, Paul (Ephesians 5:8; 1 Thessalonians 5:5), Peter (1 Peter 2:9), and John (1 John 2:9) all remind their churches that they have been saved from sin's darkness and are called to live in God's light.
When our people hear this excerpt from Isaiah, therefore, they should also hear a great deal more. For what Isaiah declares is a tone that reverberates throughout scripture, and a motif that is echoed from the dawn of creation to the Christian's daily life.
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
Even a casual reading of the epistles suggests that Corinth was something of a problem church for Paul. We see, in the 29 chapters of correspondence we have with them, evidence of both moral lapses and theological controversies; relational problems within their congregation, and relational problems with the apostle Paul; issues in both home life and church life. Yet, in the providence of God, that congregation's many issues have been used for the instruction of countless individuals and churches for 2,000 years. For so much of what we know and teach about the gifts of the Spirit, the nature of the church, the wisdom and foolishness of the gospel message, marriage and divorce, church unity, church discipline, church contributions, Paul's biography, the Lord's Supper, love, and the Resurrection are owing to what Paul wrote in response to the Corinthians' questions and problems.
Here, early in the letter, we watch Paul cope with one of Corinth's internal problems, which must have been heart-breaking for him. Evidently, there were some divisions forming within the Corinthian congregation. And those several sects gravitated around and identified themselves with four different significant persons within the Corinthians' experience: Paul himself, Apollos, Cephas (or Peter), and Christ.
It comes so naturally to us to take sides. We instinctively look at so much of life through an us/them lens. As competitive siblings, as schoolmates on the playground, as cliques in middle school or high school, and as colleagues in the workplace, we draw our lines and identify our teams. We form allegiances that bind us to these people here and alienate us from those people there. Of course, almost anything that we human beings do in the rest of life, we also do in the church.
That last detail was the heartbreaking part for Paul. After all, some things simply don't belong in church. And inasmuch as the Lord himself prayed for the unity of his followers (see John 17:11-23), such divisions and in-fighting are profoundly disappointing.
Of course, many of our people will not know who Cephas is unless we translate for them. Apollos is likely unknown to most of them (see Acts 18:24-28). So, because the characters and situation in Corinth will seem distant and unfamiliar, we may be dismissive or condescending about the problem Paul was addressing.
Yet, as the writer of Ecclesiastes noted, "There is nothing new under the sun" (1:9). And what was an issue in Corinth remains an issue today. The names have been changed, but the pattern persists. We do not segregate ourselves from one another over Cephas and Apollos anymore. We, instead, say that we are of Luther or Wesley. Of John Calvin or Roger Williams. We say that we are mainline or evangelical. Conservative or liberal. Traditional or contemporary. We are charismatic, reformed, fundamentalist, emerging, and on and on. It comes so naturally to us to take sides!
Now I come from a particular tradition and serve in a particular denomination. I am not part of a crusade in my little corner of the world to combine all of the churches in town into a single fellowship. Yet I find that I am well-rebuked by Paul, for his question to the Corinthians may very well remain his question to us: "Has Christ been divided?" For even within the walls of our individual churches, as in ancient Corinth, we experience divisions that betray the unity for which Christ prayed.
We split along lines of politics, style, or taste. We overlook the great faith, love, and salvation that unify us, while allowing ourselves to be divided over issues that are peripheral. While Jesus said that the hallmark of his followers should be their love for one another (John 13:35), the world looks at us and sees us drawing the same lines and taking the same sides as they do everywhere else.
The apostle Paul's appeal to those ancient believers in Corinth, therefore, still has great relevancy and a pointed challenge: "That all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose." Or, as the ancient hymn says it: "Let strife among us be unknown, let all contention cease… brought here together by Christ's love, by love are we thus bound."
Matthew 4:12-23
Our gospel lection is only twelve verses long; yet it features four significant events.
First, there is Jesus' response to the news about John the Baptist. We may assume that the ugly developments surrounding John were no surprise to Jesus. But news does not need to be surprising in order to be sad -- or unsettling.
We gather that Jesus had been in the southern part of Palestine -- the region of Judea, where Jerusalem itself was located -- for the occasions of his baptism and his temptation. That seems to have been the neighborhood of John's ministry, and we discover later that Jesus is fully aware of what Jerusalem will eventually hold for him (see Matthew 16:21; Luke 13:33). Now is not that time, however. So, perhaps to avoid precipitating events prematurely, Jesus withdraws from that southern area where the fervor was greater and the stakes higher. He returns to Galilee and that region becomes the familiar backdrop for his early ministry.
Second, there is Jesus' move within Galilee. We are perhaps more conscious of his family's early moves than this one. The trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem when Mary is pregnant with Jesus, the escape to Egypt when he was still a baby, and the eventual return to Nazareth when he was a boy are all more prominent on our radar screen. But here Matthew reports that Jesus made a move of his own. It seems that he made a deliberate choice to leave his hometown and adopt for himself a new hometown: Capernaum, on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee.
Matthew understands the move as a fulfillment of prophecy, though he offers no explanation of motive for it on Jesus' part. Based on Jesus' later experience in Nazareth (Matthew 13:54-58) that, perhaps significantly, is portrayed earlier in the story in Luke (4:16-30) and immediately followed by a trip to Capernaum (4:31) -- it may be that Jesus' departure from Nazareth is his own version of shaking the dust off one's feet (Matthew 10:14).
Third, there is the thumbnail summary of Jesus' early preaching. "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near" is the message. It is unmistakably reminiscent of Matthew's summation of John the Baptist's preaching, as well (3:1-2). Similarly at the end of this passage, Matthew characterizes the message of Jesus' preaching as "the good news of the kingdom."
Our people may not give much thought to John the Baptist. And when they do think of him, I suspect that they envision him having a very different look and style than Jesus. It may be instructive, therefore, to observe that they preached the same message.
Meanwhile, a great many church folks pay little attention to the "kingdom" theme in the gospels. They vaguely characterize Jesus' message being about love and forgiveness, but they miss the prominence of this "good news of the kingdom." Yet this is what John came preaching, followed shortly by Jesus. A quick survey of Jesus' teachings reveals that ten different parables in Matthew alone are explicitly designed to illustrate what the kingdom is like. I would argue that, in many churches I have known, the kingdom theme is much less prominent in the pulpit than it is in the scriptures.
Finally, there is the calling of the first disciples. Of the four events reported in this passage, this is perhaps the one that gets the most attention in our pulpits and churches. This, it seems, is where we come in, for we naturally identify with Peter and Andrew, James and John. They are our first ancestors in this life of following Jesus, and so we take their experience as a symbol for our own, and we cherish their response as the example for us to imitate.
Many sermons are rightly born out of this scene. We note the setting of the call: that it is in the midst of everyday life for the people involved and that it is the Lord's initiation. We observe that the call is specifically to follow -- not merely to believe, to agree, or to support. We see, also, that there is a corresponding change in the new disciples' activity and purpose: to become a new sort of fisherman. We are struck by the immediacy of the disciples' response, which distinguishes them from the hemming and equivocating of the would-be disciples. And, finally, we notice that following Jesus meant leaving behind things, activities, purposes, and people.
Application
We look to the New Testament for pictures of our ancestors. Not our biological forebears, of course, but rather our forefathers in the faith. Those ancient portraits illustrate for us the family features that are meant to characterize Christ's followers still today. And those characteristics are our focus as we consider this week's excerpts from 1 Corinthians and from Matthew.
Matthew's account of Jesus calling the fishermen does not give us any insight into the first disciples' ages, physical appearance, or personality types. It does, however, show us the essential attributes of a disciple: the willingness to drop and leave behind anything in order to follow Jesus and the reflex to do it immediately.
Stalling, equivocating, clinging -- these are the traits of the many would-be disciples in scripture and through the ages. But his true followers have a different look. They stop, drop, and follow when he calls. And that is the brand of discipleship to which we aspire.
We turn the page from that scene by Galilee, however, and we come to Corinth. At first blush, we think their picture is not so flattering as Matthew's portrait of those erstwhile fishermen. These Corinthian Christians seem to be tugging at and struggling with one another. With all their divisions and debates, their look is much less becoming.
In point of fact, however, Peter et al. were not so much better looking than the Corinthians. We recall plenty of gospel instances in which those first disciples were marked by fear, disputes, little faith, misunderstandings, and worldliness. The decision to follow Jesus, after all, is not the same thing as entire sanctification.
So the excerpt from 1 Corinthians is a helpful contribution to our group picture. There's no point in air-brushing the family photo and pretending something exaggerated and false.
Professor Earl B. Marlatt of Boston University Theological Seminary captured the mixed-bag followers of Jesus in a hymn. He recalls Christ's call to the first disciples and their response this way: " 'Are ye able,' said the Master, 'to be crucified with me?' 'Yea,' the sturdy dreamers answered. 'To the death we follow thee.' "
"Sturdy dreamers" who say yes to Jesus. From Galilee to Corinth, from your local church to the saints on the other shore, this is the look -- the family trait -- that has persisted throughout the generations.
Alternative Application
Isaiah 9:1-4. "People who walk in darkness." So often, you can't see people in the dark. Everyone has some experience with this. Because human beings lack the night vision of nocturnal animals, we have all been surprised at some time or another by a person whom we didn't see there in the dark. Whether it was walking into a dark room, down a dark hallway, or on a dark street, we've all experienced the uncomfortable surprise of not initially seeing someone in the dark. And when we suddenly realize that they are there in the dark, it surprises us. Often it scares us.
What is true of physical darkness is perhaps even more true of other kinds of darkness. Emotional darkness. Relational. Spiritual. So often, you can't see people in the dark. In this case, I don't mean that we can't see others when we are in the dark. Rather, I mean that we so often cannot see others when they are in the dark.
How often have we been surprised to learn that some colleague has been admitted to an alcohol rehabilitation center or that the couple down the street is separating? And how often has the news of a suicide been met by friends and associates saying, "I had no idea"?
So often you can't see that people are walking in darkness. But they are. They're there, whether we see them or not. And those people badly need to "see a great light."
That great light, according to Matthew, is Jesus and his message. Since we cannot reliably see who may be walking in darkness, it behooves us to share him and his message with everyone we know, with everyone we meet.
Preaching the Psalm
Schuyler Rhodes
Psalm 27:1, 4-9
German playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote in one of his songs that "magic fear puts the world at your command." He was referring, in this, to the ways that governments instigate fear in the population so that they might be manipulated to do things they would not otherwise dream of doing. The glaring example, of course, is the behavior of the German people in the Holocaust. Through expert manipulation the people were made to be afraid, and in their fear they would do -- and did do -- horrific things.
From television advertisers to military recruiters and back again, the manipulation of fear is used to control peoples' actions in countless ways. Afraid of a terrorist attack, the Congress of the United States passed a law called the "Patriot Act." The problem is that most of the members of Congress never even read the legislation! They voted out of fear. They were afraid of another attack; afraid if they voted against a law labeled as "patriotic," they themselves would seem unpatriotic. The whole pathetic enterprise was rooted, not in reasoned leadership, but in fear.
From the McCarthy era to the leering racial stereotypes of Japanese during the World War II, and certainly throughout our history as human beings, fear has been used to control and manipulate people. Hence, Brecht's idea that fear was magic. You make people afraid, and you can get them to do just about anything.
There is, however, an inoculation against the epidemic of fear in the world. There is a way to keep from being shuffled and pushed by the purveyors of fear. There is a surefire remedy to this pervasive dysfunction of fear in our lives.
The antidote to fear is trust in God. That's right. Fear is the disease and the cure is our ability to place our trust in God. As the psalm says, "The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?" We are easily manipulated because we place our trust in the wrong location. We trust in governments and ideologies, in philosophies and political parties, and without exception they fail us. But if we trust in God, we need not fear. If we trust in God, the "powers of this world," as Paul would call them, cannot push us around or maneuver us with fear.
For people of faith this is a pivotal concern. We cannot revive a church when we are shaking in fear. We cannot step forward in faithfulness when we are fearful of change or new direction. And we cannot share the good news of new life in Christ when we still fear the cross.
"Perfect love," as First John reminds us, "casts out fear." Let us, then, place our trust in the Lord. Let us cast out our fear and root ourselves in the salvation of our God. For indeed, if we place our trust in God, of whom shall we be afraid?
