Here comes Jesus
Commentary
Object:
It was a new gospel hit when I was a teen, with words taken from a classic spiritual out of mind and reworked for the Jesus-people generation. We sang it with gusto:
Here comes Jesus, see Him walking on the water,
He'll lift you up and He'll help you to stand;
Oh, here comes Jesus, He's the Master of the waves that roll.
Here comes Jesus, he'll save your soul.
By themselves, the words say little and reveal less. But like the coding of what we used to call "Negro Spirituals," there is a whole world standing behind the slim pickings of the text itself. For one thing, Jesus has to enter our world from outside, since the status quo is awfully messed up, and somebody better come and do something about it. Second, when Jesus arrives, in whatever time or place, he comes with unusual power, walking on water and taming storms. Third, we are fallen and weak, needing someone and something outside of ourselves to heal our wounds and restore our dignity.
In our fevered passionate chantings of the new music over against the old stuff of the church that no longer spoke to us or for us, we were shouting the gospel. And this is precisely what is taking place in today's lectionary passages. Isaiah gets the vision of Jesus' coming at a far distance and hears the voice of the Creator who re-engages a fallen world with hope and help in the form of the Suffering Servant. Peter announces the good news of Jesus to Cornelius, expanding the first Christian family of faith well beyond its initial ethnic boundaries. And Matthew pictures for us what it was like to see Jesus coming down to the Jordan where he was first publicly identified as the Savior, not only by his cousin John, but also by the divine pronouncement and visible anointing. Here comes Jesus… and the world has never been the same!
Isaiah 42:1-9
The four "Servant Songs" in Isaiah were first identified in a commentary on the prophecy by Bernhard Duhm in 1892. Subsequent scholars have confirmed the unique and related messages of these four poems, beginning with today's lectionary passage. In summary, the messages communicated about the Suffering Servant of God are these:
* Isaiah 42:1-9 -- Yahweh identifies and commissions his special envoy who will bring justice among the nations through quiet ministry to the marginalized and the disenfranchised. His work will be successful because the great Creator has chosen this one to be the agent of divine renewal.
* Isaiah 49:1-13 -- The Suffering Servant testifies of his unique call and commissioning. His voice and message are then confirmed by successive oracles in which Yahweh speaks, announcing that his servant was ordained for this ministry from before his birth, and that both kings and outcasts will experience divine favor through the work of this one. The outcome will be a restoration of joy to the entire world, which has too long suffered under the consequences of evil.
* Isaiah 50:4-9 -- Now the voice of the chosen one is heard even more clearly. The entire poem is in the first person and is a reflection on divine anointing for the tasks at hand and also the early backlash of those who do not want Yahweh to disturb their evil machinations. The confrontation thickens between good and evil, and the Suffering Servant stands at its vortex.
* Isaiah 52:13--53:12 -- The last and longest of the poems personifies the Suffering Servant most clearly. Here the focus is less on the grand justice that will result from his ministry and more on the agony that he will endure to accomplish his assigned task. What began as a shout of confidence and joy in the first song has now turned dark and almost defeatist here. Only the final lines of this song serve to remind us that Yahweh is still in control and that these things do matter for eternal purposes.
Jews and Christians have taken different tacks when providing historical interpretation to this collection. While both groups see in these passages a strong messianic prophecy, Jews believe that it is the Jewish people themselves who function in the role as the arbiter of God's justice among the nations, a task which ultimately crushes its vocalizer in the evil machines of human depravity. This is why the Jews remain the prophetic voice of God to the nations and why they also mark their history with the awful pogroms and bloody reprisals that have been unleashed against them.
Christians, on the other hand, quickly found in these passages a kind of messianic blueprint describing the coming, anointing, teaching, ministry, suffering, and death of Jesus. There is no question but that the hints at divine initiative and personal character and contextual backlash all fit hand-in-glove with the events of Jesus' career.
And that is the heart of the message for preaching today. The good world of the Creator has fallen into cancerous disabuse that threatens its existence. Most conscious of this, and most affected by it, is the human realm where evil corrupts and injustice appears to be the captain of the day. But the Creator will not allow his marvelous works and designs to be swallowed into oblivion by the madness of demonic forces. Nor will the Creator perform a power play that reduces this world to mere mechanical responses. Instead, the Creator invests himself into his Creation by way of a personification through the Suffering Servant. And those who know best what the Creator is doing are the lost and the last and the least. With eyes of faith they see the Suffering Servant stand and deliver.
This is good news! This is gospel. This is why the earliest Christian preaching on scriptural texts reached into the heart of Isaiah and found Christ.
Acts 10:34-43
In its most rudimentary divisions, the book of Acts can be divided into two main segments:
* The early church is established under the leadership of Peter (Acts 1-12).
* The early church expands missionally under the leadership of Paul (Acts 13-28).
The events of Acts 10-11 are the high-water mark of Peter's leadership. In Acts 1 he initiates the rounding out of the number of the Twelve Apostles after Judas ignobly vacates his chosen spot. In Acts 2, Peter is the key speaker of Pentecost, and the one who determines what outcomes are expected for those who believe in the risen Jesus. In chapters 3-5, Peter is the most visible source of divine healing in the name of Jesus and the primary spokesperson for the apostles in both official settings and public discourses. After a brief look at the origins of the ministry of deacons in Acts 6-7, Peter is again front and center in the healings and confrontations of chapters 8-9, except for the brief excurses following Philip's exploits and Saul's conversion. Here in chapters 10-11 Peter oversees the spread of Christianity from its Jewish messianic sectarian origins into a truly trans-national religion. It is very interesting this happens before Paul is called to his multi-ethnic, international mission to the Gentiles, and it takes place under the direct instigation of the most Jewish and respected of the apostles. The church can never say that Paul led it astray from its original Jewish messianic roots, for it was Jesus' own initiatives through Peter that broadened it base to all of humankind.
It is important, at this point, to remember the more specific literary moves that Luke takes in crafting the tale of Acts as a whole. Following the brief outline provided by Jesus himself in Acts 1:8 (and reiterated here by Peter in 10:37), a broad outline of Acts looks like this:
* Acts 1-7 -- the ministry of Jesus in Jerusalem
* Acts 8-12 -- the ministry of Jesus in Judea and Samaria
* Acts 13-28 -- the ministry of Jesus to the ends of the earth
However, overlaid on this obvious movement is a more subtle subtext. Five times over Luke uses a phrase similar to this: "So the Word of God grew and multiplied…" (6:7; 9:31; 12:24; 16:5; 19:20) to bring a section to conclusion. Each time the new territory encompasses a wider spread than did the last. So, for instance, Acts 1:1--6:7 is focused on developments within the city of Jerusalem. Acts 6:8--9:31 moves the territorial advance into Judea and Samaria. Acts 12:25--16:5 will lead the church into Asia Minor. And Acts 16:6--19:20 will allow it to penetrate and significantly influence Europe. In other words, these subtle markings provide the incremental stages whereby Luke shows how the broader gospel expansions outlined by Jesus actually take place.
Also within this context, today's lectionary passage becomes critical, and its impact more fully understood. For along with the territorial expansions noted above, chapters 9:32--12:24 are devoted to another type of border crossing: that between Jew and Gentile.
The story is powerfully set up with the simultaneous dual visions provided to Cornelius (Acts 10:1-8) and Peter (Acts 10:9-18) that magnetically draw these key figures toward one another. The connection is accomplished in Acts 10:19-33, confirming that God has initiated this meeting and its outcomes. Our text for today is the essence of Peter's preaching about Jesus and brings to mind his similar words to a Jewish audience in Jerusalem on Pentecost (Acts 2). The focal point is Jesus, whose ministry, death, and resurrection are identified as God's recent spectacular affirmation of divine love and missional witness. New this time is the recognition that Gentiles along with Jews are called to repentance and faith.
There are always homiletic choices to make and for today at least one is whether to preach the sermon of Peter or the whole incident recounted in Acts 10-11. Taking the first path would mean a message developed around a summary of Jesus' life and teachings with a call to repentance and conversion. Moving down the second walkway focuses the message on cultural divides in society and the manner in which the gospel transcends them. The first sermonic method is more in line with Epiphany, while the latter is more broadly in tune with the intent of the passage as it exists in the flow of Acts.
Matthew 3:13-17
Matthew wants to emphasize, for his Jewish-Christian communicants, the resounding connection between Jesus and their historic faith. To accomplish this, he builds a genealogic table (1:1-17) that points to the rhythmic work of God in bringing the messianic kingdom, even concluding the recitation with a clear indication that God has to be up to something again, since the dials and cogs and constellations are all lining up again for the culminating fourteenth generation.
Then Matthew checks off a list of comparisons that will fully identify Jesus with the heritage of Israel. Jesus is miraculously born according to angelic foretelling (1:1-18), just like others of Israel's strategic deliverers (think of Isaac, Samson, Samuel). Jesus is heralded to the nations (2:1-12) as the ultimate source of human meaning and divine connection (think of God's testimony to Abram in Genesis 12, and Rahab and the Gibeonites of Joshua's experiences). Next, like ancient Israel, Jesus is called out of Egypt, just as the ruler of the day kills baby boys (Herod=Pharaoh), and called to a unique ministry (living in Nazareth he becomes a Nazarene, which sounds like a Nazirite).
Matthew then continues this deft coupling of Jesus with Israel as he brings the prophet John out of the wilderness (think Moses) to help Jesus pass through the waters of the Jordan River (as did Israel, 3:1-17), while a period of temptation for forty days for Jesus, years for Israel prepares them to enter the promised land of messianic fulfillment (4:1-25). All of this is confirmed when Jesus becomes the new Moses, going up the mountain (5:1) to teach the ways of the kingdom to a new generation.
So today's lectionary reading, while absolutely appropriate for the first Sunday in Epiphany, is part of a larger collection of signs (like the old Burma Shave postings along highways) that cumulatively tell a bigger story than the parts. Yes, Jesus is revealed here as the heaven-sent and commissioned Messiah. Yes, there are hints of the Trinity that emerge through the combination of a voice from glory, a descending Spirit, and the person of Jesus in the water, all manifest at the same moment.
But Matthew also wants us to see the recapitulation of God's earlier work through Israel, the beginning of the great promise to Abram (Genesis 12) to bless all nations of the earth through his descendents. Whereas that was accomplished in part through the kingdom of David and Solomon, in recent centuries the lamp of witness was nearly snuffed. So now, "here comes Jesus!" and history will never be the same!
Application
"You've got to see Avatar," wrote my friend. A doctoral student in philosophical studies who breathes skepticism, my friend is not known for gushing, particularly at Hollywood productions.
Yet Avatar had rushed his jets because, he said, it told the truth. Not the accurate truth about historical events, or the warm truth about relationships, or the scientific truth about exploration and discovery, but the truth about meaning, about existence, about life, and about God.
The movie industry sells a lot of the fluff and mediocrity that audiences crave because we want quick-fix emotional escapes. But in Hollywood's squalid mix there are "utopias." Thomas More coined that term for his 1516 social critique, combining the Greek words for "no" and "place" to speak of a Neverland that we desperately want but cannot find. Avatar brings a lump to our throats because what springs to life in 3-D splendor is a utopia that meets five of our hearts' longings:
* It criticizes our current world's crass materialism.
* It inspires in us the contours of a world where truer, purer values guide us.
* It cleanses us by setting in stark contrast the baser drives we too often express and the higher moral values that can shape us.
* It calls to us with the voice of kind wisdom that resonates with our deepest feelings, beckoning us home.
* It portrays characters making the journey ahead of us, giving us hope that we can follow them.
Although More's Utopia doesn't grab me quite the way it did others in his age, I understand why they were thrilled. I have my own list of utopias that come out when people ask about "best books" and "favorite movies." While I can't always explain my choices, this I know: something of the coming kingdom of God whistles through them, yanking me into eternity, even for a brief moment. It is indeed like poet and cancer victim Donna Hoffman wrote in her waning months: "My feet stumble, but ah, how my heart can soar!"
This is the message that today's lectionary readings bring together: Isaiah peers into a future where God brings goodness out of our messes; Peter announces hope and healing to another segment of the world's population, based upon the recent coming of Jesus; and Matthew helps us understand the transformational moment when eternity stepped into time at the coming of Jesus, and a new world order was born. Here comes Jesus!
Alternative Application
Acts 10:34-43. The book of Acts is the second of Luke's two volumes on the life and work of Jesus, presented first through his direct incarnate person in the gospel, and now through his body the church. The momentum of the stories told in the book of Acts is derived from a single, critical incident that took place in Jerusalem during the Jewish religious festival known as Passover. Jesus' instruction for his disciples to stay in Jerusalem and wait for a special gift (Acts 1:4) must have seemed vague at the time, but the arrival of the explosive power of the Holy Spirit at Passover made sense. This celebration was both a harvest festival and a time for recalling the gift of the original covenant documents to Moses at Mount Sinai. These two themes intersected marvelously with what was taking place. First, there was the dawning of a new age of revelation and divine mission, paralleling that first covenant declaration in the book of Exodus. Second, during the Passover harvest festival, the first sheaves of grain were presented at the Temple, anticipating that God would then bring in the full harvest. This expression of faith served as a clear analogy to the greater missional harvest of the church that was begun through a miraculous "first fruits" in Jerusalem that day.
Peter capitalized on these themes when he preached a sermon explaining Joel's prophecy of the "Day of the Lord." Peter tied together God's extensive mission, the history of Israel, the coming of Jesus, and the splitting of the Day of the Lord so that the blessings of the messianic age could begin before the final divine judgment fell. The pattern for entering the new community of faith was clearly outlined: repent and be baptized. The first indicated a transforming presence of the Holy Spirit in individual hearts, while the latter became the initiation rite by which the ranks of this missional society were identified (over against the badge of circumcision in its unique application to the nation of Israel, which was now being replaced -- see Colossians 2:11-12).
Reaction to the rapidly developing Christian fellowship was swift and sharp. Within Jerusalem's dominant religious community there was consternation about this identification of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah (Acts 4), creating tensions and divisions. Inside the newly organized church there were ethical issues that needed to be addressed (Acts 5-6). Soon the followers of Jesus needed to expand their leadership team (the deacons of Acts 6) and found themselves the targets of increasingly organized persecutions (Acts 8:1-3). Although this disrupted the close fellowship of the Jerusalem congregation, those who moved elsewhere to find safety brought the message of Jesus' teachings, death, and resurrection with them.
An amazing turn happened, however, when the leading persecutor, a zealous Pharisee named Saul, suddenly went through a miraculous conversion (Acts 9) and began to preach that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. When Peter's exploits with the Roman centurion Cornelius at Caesarea nurtured the new Gentile mission of the church (Acts 10-11), Diaspora-born Paul (Saul by his other name) became the perfect candidate to partner with Barnabas in establishing an international congregation in the eastern Roman capital city of Antioch (Acts 12). Soon this congregation became the launching pad for the great mission journeys of Paul and his companions (Acts 13-19) that would forever relocate the expansion of the Christian church outside of Jerusalem and Palestine.
What had been a centripetal energizing motion during the first phase of God's recovery mission on planet earth (that is, drawing the nations toward a re-engagement with their Creator through the strategically placed nation of Israel) was now shifted into a centrifugal motion of divine sending out to the nations in ever-widening circles of witness. The Christian church, born as a Jewish messianic sect, became a global religion.
The book of Acts functions in the New Testament in a similar manner to the way in which the "Former Prophets" or historical books did in the Old Testament. This is neither a complete nor impartial history of the first years of the Christian church. Rather, it is an interpretive commentary on the manner in which the church was either a faithful community of witness or where it became sidelined when it forgot its essential nature. While the span of time the book of Acts covers is rather brief (roughly 30 AD through 58 AD), the basic model of church life is established, and the content of its missional message clearly articulated.
In fact, Luke seems deliberately to draw parallels between the early days of the nation of Israel and these first years of the Christian church. For instance, the critical sin of Achan that nearly compromised the conquest of Canaan in Joshua 7 finds a striking counterpart in the ethical failure of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5, which caused the marvelous openness and sacrificial grace of the early Jerusalem church to become momentarily tarnished. Similarly, the horrible enslavement of Israel by Egypt, along with its miraculous deliverance to live out a higher purpose, appears to be intentionally back-grounded as Luke tells of Peter's divine deliverance from prison and the freeing effects it had on the church (Acts 12).
All in all, Acts provides the context in which the more pointed instructions of the apostolic letters can be understood. Together they form the prophetic pair of this new era of the divine redemptive mission.
Preaching the Psalms
Schuyler Rhodes
Psalm 29
There are many people throughout history and right down to this moment who have claimed to be in conversation with God. The conversant list is long. From prophets and phonies to visionaries and vagabonds, an endless parade of people down the centuries have claimed to hear the voice of the Lord. For those who watch the parade of such claimants, the trick is to ascertain who is actually hearing the voice of the Lord. To whom, one has to ask, would God speak? And then another question rushes in as well. Who has the ears to hear?
If we follow the reasoning of this psalm, the voice of the Lord is everywhere. It can be heard over the waters, in the thunder, and in the wind. Opting for an almost pantheistic idea of God, this psalm places the voice of the Holy within the broad spectrum of what we would call "nature." And in this view, we have only to listen with a right spirit and we shall hear the voice of the Lord. In the babbling brook and the rustling leaves we can hear the voice of the Lord. In the rumbling surf and gale winds howling about our homes we can hear the voice of the Lord. In the waking of the birds at dawn and the peeping of the tiny frogs on spring nights we can hear the voice of the Lord.
This, of course, is true. It is why people seek the solace of a beach or the lofty grandeur of a mountaintop to be in prayer. In these places, the voice of the Lord can indeed be heard.
What do we do, however, when the voice of the Lord is understood as a more verbal reality? How does a community of faith respond when someone says that they have been speaking directly with God? This happens more frequently than one might imagine and often to tragic ends. From Jim Jones to David Koresh, a sickening line of quacks and crazies have claimed to have a direct line to God. How can we tell if such people are for real? One quick way to discern authenticity is to ask what God is saying. If God is directing the person to kill others or to maim and destroy, chances are good that this isn't God. At least it's not the God we have discovered in Christ Jesus.
Another way to discern as to the authenticity of someone's claim to hear the voice of the Lord is to look at their actions. "By their fruits, shall ye know them," says Jesus. Does someone claim to be in conversation with Jesus, and then go and steal money from the community? Does a leader tell us they're hearing directly from God and then engage in inappropriate sexual behavior?
The voice of the Lord can be heard across the geography of creation. Our job, it turns out, is to listen, to discern, and to be clear about what it is we're really hearing. For now, this writer will sit on the beach and listen to the surf.
Here comes Jesus, see Him walking on the water,
He'll lift you up and He'll help you to stand;
Oh, here comes Jesus, He's the Master of the waves that roll.
Here comes Jesus, he'll save your soul.
By themselves, the words say little and reveal less. But like the coding of what we used to call "Negro Spirituals," there is a whole world standing behind the slim pickings of the text itself. For one thing, Jesus has to enter our world from outside, since the status quo is awfully messed up, and somebody better come and do something about it. Second, when Jesus arrives, in whatever time or place, he comes with unusual power, walking on water and taming storms. Third, we are fallen and weak, needing someone and something outside of ourselves to heal our wounds and restore our dignity.
In our fevered passionate chantings of the new music over against the old stuff of the church that no longer spoke to us or for us, we were shouting the gospel. And this is precisely what is taking place in today's lectionary passages. Isaiah gets the vision of Jesus' coming at a far distance and hears the voice of the Creator who re-engages a fallen world with hope and help in the form of the Suffering Servant. Peter announces the good news of Jesus to Cornelius, expanding the first Christian family of faith well beyond its initial ethnic boundaries. And Matthew pictures for us what it was like to see Jesus coming down to the Jordan where he was first publicly identified as the Savior, not only by his cousin John, but also by the divine pronouncement and visible anointing. Here comes Jesus… and the world has never been the same!
Isaiah 42:1-9
The four "Servant Songs" in Isaiah were first identified in a commentary on the prophecy by Bernhard Duhm in 1892. Subsequent scholars have confirmed the unique and related messages of these four poems, beginning with today's lectionary passage. In summary, the messages communicated about the Suffering Servant of God are these:
* Isaiah 42:1-9 -- Yahweh identifies and commissions his special envoy who will bring justice among the nations through quiet ministry to the marginalized and the disenfranchised. His work will be successful because the great Creator has chosen this one to be the agent of divine renewal.
* Isaiah 49:1-13 -- The Suffering Servant testifies of his unique call and commissioning. His voice and message are then confirmed by successive oracles in which Yahweh speaks, announcing that his servant was ordained for this ministry from before his birth, and that both kings and outcasts will experience divine favor through the work of this one. The outcome will be a restoration of joy to the entire world, which has too long suffered under the consequences of evil.
* Isaiah 50:4-9 -- Now the voice of the chosen one is heard even more clearly. The entire poem is in the first person and is a reflection on divine anointing for the tasks at hand and also the early backlash of those who do not want Yahweh to disturb their evil machinations. The confrontation thickens between good and evil, and the Suffering Servant stands at its vortex.
* Isaiah 52:13--53:12 -- The last and longest of the poems personifies the Suffering Servant most clearly. Here the focus is less on the grand justice that will result from his ministry and more on the agony that he will endure to accomplish his assigned task. What began as a shout of confidence and joy in the first song has now turned dark and almost defeatist here. Only the final lines of this song serve to remind us that Yahweh is still in control and that these things do matter for eternal purposes.
Jews and Christians have taken different tacks when providing historical interpretation to this collection. While both groups see in these passages a strong messianic prophecy, Jews believe that it is the Jewish people themselves who function in the role as the arbiter of God's justice among the nations, a task which ultimately crushes its vocalizer in the evil machines of human depravity. This is why the Jews remain the prophetic voice of God to the nations and why they also mark their history with the awful pogroms and bloody reprisals that have been unleashed against them.
Christians, on the other hand, quickly found in these passages a kind of messianic blueprint describing the coming, anointing, teaching, ministry, suffering, and death of Jesus. There is no question but that the hints at divine initiative and personal character and contextual backlash all fit hand-in-glove with the events of Jesus' career.
And that is the heart of the message for preaching today. The good world of the Creator has fallen into cancerous disabuse that threatens its existence. Most conscious of this, and most affected by it, is the human realm where evil corrupts and injustice appears to be the captain of the day. But the Creator will not allow his marvelous works and designs to be swallowed into oblivion by the madness of demonic forces. Nor will the Creator perform a power play that reduces this world to mere mechanical responses. Instead, the Creator invests himself into his Creation by way of a personification through the Suffering Servant. And those who know best what the Creator is doing are the lost and the last and the least. With eyes of faith they see the Suffering Servant stand and deliver.
This is good news! This is gospel. This is why the earliest Christian preaching on scriptural texts reached into the heart of Isaiah and found Christ.
Acts 10:34-43
In its most rudimentary divisions, the book of Acts can be divided into two main segments:
* The early church is established under the leadership of Peter (Acts 1-12).
* The early church expands missionally under the leadership of Paul (Acts 13-28).
The events of Acts 10-11 are the high-water mark of Peter's leadership. In Acts 1 he initiates the rounding out of the number of the Twelve Apostles after Judas ignobly vacates his chosen spot. In Acts 2, Peter is the key speaker of Pentecost, and the one who determines what outcomes are expected for those who believe in the risen Jesus. In chapters 3-5, Peter is the most visible source of divine healing in the name of Jesus and the primary spokesperson for the apostles in both official settings and public discourses. After a brief look at the origins of the ministry of deacons in Acts 6-7, Peter is again front and center in the healings and confrontations of chapters 8-9, except for the brief excurses following Philip's exploits and Saul's conversion. Here in chapters 10-11 Peter oversees the spread of Christianity from its Jewish messianic sectarian origins into a truly trans-national religion. It is very interesting this happens before Paul is called to his multi-ethnic, international mission to the Gentiles, and it takes place under the direct instigation of the most Jewish and respected of the apostles. The church can never say that Paul led it astray from its original Jewish messianic roots, for it was Jesus' own initiatives through Peter that broadened it base to all of humankind.
It is important, at this point, to remember the more specific literary moves that Luke takes in crafting the tale of Acts as a whole. Following the brief outline provided by Jesus himself in Acts 1:8 (and reiterated here by Peter in 10:37), a broad outline of Acts looks like this:
* Acts 1-7 -- the ministry of Jesus in Jerusalem
* Acts 8-12 -- the ministry of Jesus in Judea and Samaria
* Acts 13-28 -- the ministry of Jesus to the ends of the earth
However, overlaid on this obvious movement is a more subtle subtext. Five times over Luke uses a phrase similar to this: "So the Word of God grew and multiplied…" (6:7; 9:31; 12:24; 16:5; 19:20) to bring a section to conclusion. Each time the new territory encompasses a wider spread than did the last. So, for instance, Acts 1:1--6:7 is focused on developments within the city of Jerusalem. Acts 6:8--9:31 moves the territorial advance into Judea and Samaria. Acts 12:25--16:5 will lead the church into Asia Minor. And Acts 16:6--19:20 will allow it to penetrate and significantly influence Europe. In other words, these subtle markings provide the incremental stages whereby Luke shows how the broader gospel expansions outlined by Jesus actually take place.
Also within this context, today's lectionary passage becomes critical, and its impact more fully understood. For along with the territorial expansions noted above, chapters 9:32--12:24 are devoted to another type of border crossing: that between Jew and Gentile.
The story is powerfully set up with the simultaneous dual visions provided to Cornelius (Acts 10:1-8) and Peter (Acts 10:9-18) that magnetically draw these key figures toward one another. The connection is accomplished in Acts 10:19-33, confirming that God has initiated this meeting and its outcomes. Our text for today is the essence of Peter's preaching about Jesus and brings to mind his similar words to a Jewish audience in Jerusalem on Pentecost (Acts 2). The focal point is Jesus, whose ministry, death, and resurrection are identified as God's recent spectacular affirmation of divine love and missional witness. New this time is the recognition that Gentiles along with Jews are called to repentance and faith.
There are always homiletic choices to make and for today at least one is whether to preach the sermon of Peter or the whole incident recounted in Acts 10-11. Taking the first path would mean a message developed around a summary of Jesus' life and teachings with a call to repentance and conversion. Moving down the second walkway focuses the message on cultural divides in society and the manner in which the gospel transcends them. The first sermonic method is more in line with Epiphany, while the latter is more broadly in tune with the intent of the passage as it exists in the flow of Acts.
Matthew 3:13-17
Matthew wants to emphasize, for his Jewish-Christian communicants, the resounding connection between Jesus and their historic faith. To accomplish this, he builds a genealogic table (1:1-17) that points to the rhythmic work of God in bringing the messianic kingdom, even concluding the recitation with a clear indication that God has to be up to something again, since the dials and cogs and constellations are all lining up again for the culminating fourteenth generation.
Then Matthew checks off a list of comparisons that will fully identify Jesus with the heritage of Israel. Jesus is miraculously born according to angelic foretelling (1:1-18), just like others of Israel's strategic deliverers (think of Isaac, Samson, Samuel). Jesus is heralded to the nations (2:1-12) as the ultimate source of human meaning and divine connection (think of God's testimony to Abram in Genesis 12, and Rahab and the Gibeonites of Joshua's experiences). Next, like ancient Israel, Jesus is called out of Egypt, just as the ruler of the day kills baby boys (Herod=Pharaoh), and called to a unique ministry (living in Nazareth he becomes a Nazarene, which sounds like a Nazirite).
Matthew then continues this deft coupling of Jesus with Israel as he brings the prophet John out of the wilderness (think Moses) to help Jesus pass through the waters of the Jordan River (as did Israel, 3:1-17), while a period of temptation for forty days for Jesus, years for Israel prepares them to enter the promised land of messianic fulfillment (4:1-25). All of this is confirmed when Jesus becomes the new Moses, going up the mountain (5:1) to teach the ways of the kingdom to a new generation.
So today's lectionary reading, while absolutely appropriate for the first Sunday in Epiphany, is part of a larger collection of signs (like the old Burma Shave postings along highways) that cumulatively tell a bigger story than the parts. Yes, Jesus is revealed here as the heaven-sent and commissioned Messiah. Yes, there are hints of the Trinity that emerge through the combination of a voice from glory, a descending Spirit, and the person of Jesus in the water, all manifest at the same moment.
But Matthew also wants us to see the recapitulation of God's earlier work through Israel, the beginning of the great promise to Abram (Genesis 12) to bless all nations of the earth through his descendents. Whereas that was accomplished in part through the kingdom of David and Solomon, in recent centuries the lamp of witness was nearly snuffed. So now, "here comes Jesus!" and history will never be the same!
Application
"You've got to see Avatar," wrote my friend. A doctoral student in philosophical studies who breathes skepticism, my friend is not known for gushing, particularly at Hollywood productions.
Yet Avatar had rushed his jets because, he said, it told the truth. Not the accurate truth about historical events, or the warm truth about relationships, or the scientific truth about exploration and discovery, but the truth about meaning, about existence, about life, and about God.
The movie industry sells a lot of the fluff and mediocrity that audiences crave because we want quick-fix emotional escapes. But in Hollywood's squalid mix there are "utopias." Thomas More coined that term for his 1516 social critique, combining the Greek words for "no" and "place" to speak of a Neverland that we desperately want but cannot find. Avatar brings a lump to our throats because what springs to life in 3-D splendor is a utopia that meets five of our hearts' longings:
* It criticizes our current world's crass materialism.
* It inspires in us the contours of a world where truer, purer values guide us.
* It cleanses us by setting in stark contrast the baser drives we too often express and the higher moral values that can shape us.
* It calls to us with the voice of kind wisdom that resonates with our deepest feelings, beckoning us home.
* It portrays characters making the journey ahead of us, giving us hope that we can follow them.
Although More's Utopia doesn't grab me quite the way it did others in his age, I understand why they were thrilled. I have my own list of utopias that come out when people ask about "best books" and "favorite movies." While I can't always explain my choices, this I know: something of the coming kingdom of God whistles through them, yanking me into eternity, even for a brief moment. It is indeed like poet and cancer victim Donna Hoffman wrote in her waning months: "My feet stumble, but ah, how my heart can soar!"
This is the message that today's lectionary readings bring together: Isaiah peers into a future where God brings goodness out of our messes; Peter announces hope and healing to another segment of the world's population, based upon the recent coming of Jesus; and Matthew helps us understand the transformational moment when eternity stepped into time at the coming of Jesus, and a new world order was born. Here comes Jesus!
Alternative Application
Acts 10:34-43. The book of Acts is the second of Luke's two volumes on the life and work of Jesus, presented first through his direct incarnate person in the gospel, and now through his body the church. The momentum of the stories told in the book of Acts is derived from a single, critical incident that took place in Jerusalem during the Jewish religious festival known as Passover. Jesus' instruction for his disciples to stay in Jerusalem and wait for a special gift (Acts 1:4) must have seemed vague at the time, but the arrival of the explosive power of the Holy Spirit at Passover made sense. This celebration was both a harvest festival and a time for recalling the gift of the original covenant documents to Moses at Mount Sinai. These two themes intersected marvelously with what was taking place. First, there was the dawning of a new age of revelation and divine mission, paralleling that first covenant declaration in the book of Exodus. Second, during the Passover harvest festival, the first sheaves of grain were presented at the Temple, anticipating that God would then bring in the full harvest. This expression of faith served as a clear analogy to the greater missional harvest of the church that was begun through a miraculous "first fruits" in Jerusalem that day.
Peter capitalized on these themes when he preached a sermon explaining Joel's prophecy of the "Day of the Lord." Peter tied together God's extensive mission, the history of Israel, the coming of Jesus, and the splitting of the Day of the Lord so that the blessings of the messianic age could begin before the final divine judgment fell. The pattern for entering the new community of faith was clearly outlined: repent and be baptized. The first indicated a transforming presence of the Holy Spirit in individual hearts, while the latter became the initiation rite by which the ranks of this missional society were identified (over against the badge of circumcision in its unique application to the nation of Israel, which was now being replaced -- see Colossians 2:11-12).
Reaction to the rapidly developing Christian fellowship was swift and sharp. Within Jerusalem's dominant religious community there was consternation about this identification of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah (Acts 4), creating tensions and divisions. Inside the newly organized church there were ethical issues that needed to be addressed (Acts 5-6). Soon the followers of Jesus needed to expand their leadership team (the deacons of Acts 6) and found themselves the targets of increasingly organized persecutions (Acts 8:1-3). Although this disrupted the close fellowship of the Jerusalem congregation, those who moved elsewhere to find safety brought the message of Jesus' teachings, death, and resurrection with them.
An amazing turn happened, however, when the leading persecutor, a zealous Pharisee named Saul, suddenly went through a miraculous conversion (Acts 9) and began to preach that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. When Peter's exploits with the Roman centurion Cornelius at Caesarea nurtured the new Gentile mission of the church (Acts 10-11), Diaspora-born Paul (Saul by his other name) became the perfect candidate to partner with Barnabas in establishing an international congregation in the eastern Roman capital city of Antioch (Acts 12). Soon this congregation became the launching pad for the great mission journeys of Paul and his companions (Acts 13-19) that would forever relocate the expansion of the Christian church outside of Jerusalem and Palestine.
What had been a centripetal energizing motion during the first phase of God's recovery mission on planet earth (that is, drawing the nations toward a re-engagement with their Creator through the strategically placed nation of Israel) was now shifted into a centrifugal motion of divine sending out to the nations in ever-widening circles of witness. The Christian church, born as a Jewish messianic sect, became a global religion.
The book of Acts functions in the New Testament in a similar manner to the way in which the "Former Prophets" or historical books did in the Old Testament. This is neither a complete nor impartial history of the first years of the Christian church. Rather, it is an interpretive commentary on the manner in which the church was either a faithful community of witness or where it became sidelined when it forgot its essential nature. While the span of time the book of Acts covers is rather brief (roughly 30 AD through 58 AD), the basic model of church life is established, and the content of its missional message clearly articulated.
In fact, Luke seems deliberately to draw parallels between the early days of the nation of Israel and these first years of the Christian church. For instance, the critical sin of Achan that nearly compromised the conquest of Canaan in Joshua 7 finds a striking counterpart in the ethical failure of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5, which caused the marvelous openness and sacrificial grace of the early Jerusalem church to become momentarily tarnished. Similarly, the horrible enslavement of Israel by Egypt, along with its miraculous deliverance to live out a higher purpose, appears to be intentionally back-grounded as Luke tells of Peter's divine deliverance from prison and the freeing effects it had on the church (Acts 12).
All in all, Acts provides the context in which the more pointed instructions of the apostolic letters can be understood. Together they form the prophetic pair of this new era of the divine redemptive mission.
Preaching the Psalms
Schuyler Rhodes
Psalm 29
There are many people throughout history and right down to this moment who have claimed to be in conversation with God. The conversant list is long. From prophets and phonies to visionaries and vagabonds, an endless parade of people down the centuries have claimed to hear the voice of the Lord. For those who watch the parade of such claimants, the trick is to ascertain who is actually hearing the voice of the Lord. To whom, one has to ask, would God speak? And then another question rushes in as well. Who has the ears to hear?
If we follow the reasoning of this psalm, the voice of the Lord is everywhere. It can be heard over the waters, in the thunder, and in the wind. Opting for an almost pantheistic idea of God, this psalm places the voice of the Holy within the broad spectrum of what we would call "nature." And in this view, we have only to listen with a right spirit and we shall hear the voice of the Lord. In the babbling brook and the rustling leaves we can hear the voice of the Lord. In the rumbling surf and gale winds howling about our homes we can hear the voice of the Lord. In the waking of the birds at dawn and the peeping of the tiny frogs on spring nights we can hear the voice of the Lord.
This, of course, is true. It is why people seek the solace of a beach or the lofty grandeur of a mountaintop to be in prayer. In these places, the voice of the Lord can indeed be heard.
What do we do, however, when the voice of the Lord is understood as a more verbal reality? How does a community of faith respond when someone says that they have been speaking directly with God? This happens more frequently than one might imagine and often to tragic ends. From Jim Jones to David Koresh, a sickening line of quacks and crazies have claimed to have a direct line to God. How can we tell if such people are for real? One quick way to discern authenticity is to ask what God is saying. If God is directing the person to kill others or to maim and destroy, chances are good that this isn't God. At least it's not the God we have discovered in Christ Jesus.
Another way to discern as to the authenticity of someone's claim to hear the voice of the Lord is to look at their actions. "By their fruits, shall ye know them," says Jesus. Does someone claim to be in conversation with Jesus, and then go and steal money from the community? Does a leader tell us they're hearing directly from God and then engage in inappropriate sexual behavior?
The voice of the Lord can be heard across the geography of creation. Our job, it turns out, is to listen, to discern, and to be clear about what it is we're really hearing. For now, this writer will sit on the beach and listen to the surf.
