Political religion
Commentary
Object:
"Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous!" said Winston Churchill.
"In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times."
In one of his essays, Albert Camus describes a powerful scene. John Huss, the great Czech reformer of the church, is on trial. His accusers twist all his ideas out of shape. They refuse to give him a hearing. They maneuver the political machine against him and incite popular passion to a lynch-mob frenzy. Finally, Huss is condemned to be burned at the stake. As the flames surround him, people who couldn't possibly have read his writings and who have no interest in either his perspectives or those of the governing authorities, line up to assist in the murder. "When they were burning John Huss," writes Camus, "a gentle little old lady came carrying her fagot to add it to the pile."
The tragedy of politics often lies in passions, not platforms. "Private passions grow tired and wear themselves out; political passions, never!" says Lamartine. That's why there is an unwritten rule in many communities that when all the in-laws and out-laws get together for the annual "family rebellion" you can't talk about politics or religion. Both grab a person so deeply!
Maybe, when it comes right down to it, politics and religion are much the same thing. The kingdom of God, as Isaiah and Paul and Jesus note in today's passages, is very political. It's a perspective on all of life. It's a way of holding things together and giving them meaning. It's a movement that is out to change the world, to reclaim lost territory in the civil war of the universe.
That's why Jesus' followers got into trouble with the political leaders of their day. Two visions of reality collided. Two perspectives on life challenged each other. Six times over in the book of Acts, the Christian community is called "The Way." Not "The Society," nor "The Institution," but "The Way"!
The church of Jesus Christ is a political movement. It's on the way to somewhere. Every worship service is a political rally; a time when we refocus our energies, study our political platform and policies, and pay homage to the party leader who calls to us in no uncertain tones: "Follow me!"
Isaiah 9:1-4
Some images dig their way into your mind and stick like glue. Listen to this description of dawn in Texas first published in National Geographic back in 1980:
Anywhere in Texas, the best time is dawn. The sun flares above prairies and sere hills, caressing old Spanish missions, oil fields, remote ranches, the dew-kissed produce of early markets. It searches out the gaudy cities. Their neon signs, so bright with promise only a dusk ago, fade and expire as morning suffuses the sky ... Beside the Brazos River, the mesquites and cottonwoods take shape in the dim pewter light. A creamy fog clings to the bottom lands like a fallen cloud ... The world emerges from the little death of night.
Remember when you stood there one morning? Even if you've never been to Texas, remember when you have experienced that?
There is something powerful about the early morning, something new and vibrant and refreshing. When you stay awake all night, dawn seems to revive you. When you get up early in the morning, dawn welcomes you.
Dawn "comes up like thunder" in one of Kipling's poems, and creeps "rosy-fingered" through the skies, according to Homer. Matthew Arnold remembers the "music" of the "bird-haunted" trees in an English garden at dawn. And who could forget Masefield's (1890) striking images in the poem "Sea Fever":
I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking.
Remember? Even if you are not a morning person, there is something of the dawn that lingers in every great experience you feel. For dawn is the surge of life, and dawn is the power of rebirth, and dawn is the victory of the future over the past.
Leslie Weatherhead once called Christianity "the religion of the dawn." He pointed to the first dawning of light at creation as the irreversible testimony of God to this world. "It is a religion of unquenchable faith and hope and patience; unquenchable because it believes that the permanent thing is light and the passable thing is darkness; that however long the night, whether it be in world affairs or the poignant private world of the human heart, the night will pass."
Then he pointed more specifically to the astounding power of Easter dawn. "After the great darkness, this amazing dawn! Within seven weeks they -- the hunted, frightened fugitives -- had become flaming missionaries and willing martyrs ready to lay down their lives rather than deny the truth of His risen glory and His transforming power ... From the East the dawn-light spread across the skies of the world. The religion of the dawn!"
Isaiah's vision in chapter 9 knows the power of the first dawn and anticipates the courage of the second. He sings a lament with those who have wrestled too long with the night. He hums at the dawn of a new and coming era, one which knows more fully the strength of new life. For the dawn that is arriving is the morning of God's grace and mercy and peace. It is resplendent, exalted above the changing lights of the heavens and defeating the dark shadows that form themselves into the evil tidings of evening newspapers. Isaiah heralds the dawn because it is the promise of greater things that God will yet do.
In fact, it is not the dawn of sun's first glow that awakens any of us this morning, but rather he who awakens the dawn itself. Even in the blackness of midnight hours, when chills attack the bones, when eyesight strains at the mysterious movements of unseen attackers, when ears are bombarded with frightening sounds just at the threshold of distinction, Isaiah takes out his musical instruments and sings a song of grace and love and power. For other dawns remind him of divine strength, and other sunrises warm his heart in anticipation.
Remember?
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
The city of Corinth was located at the southwestern end of the narrow land bridge between Greece's northern and southern mainland regions. It played a vital role for the region in both land and sea trade. It was a wealthy metropolis during the first century AD, and coupled that abundance of resources with many social vices. Sexual openness and experimentation, in particular, oozed out of Corinth, until the rest of the Mediterranean world began to use its name to identify lascivious lifestyles.
Paul's stay in Corinth is quickly told in Acts 18:1-17. He began his missionary sojourn there, as usual, with a time of teaching about Jesus to the Jews in the local synagogue. Paul was eventually forced out by vigorous opponents who refused to acknowledge that Jesus could have been the promised Messiah. Although Paul was no longer permitted to speak in the synagogue, the leader of the synagogue became a believer, as did a good number of its members. From a new location in the house adjacent to the synagogue, and also from his work space in the Corinthian market as a tentmaker, Paul broadened his preaching dialogues with people until a thriving congregation was formed of both Jewish and Gentile converts.
Encouraged by a vision that affirmed divine blessing on his ministry there (Acts 18:9-11), Paul stayed in Corinth at least a year-and-a-half (virtually all of 50 AD and well along into 51 AD). Then he decided to make a report back at his sending church in Syrian Antioch, and took his new friends Priscilla and Aquila along (Acts 18:18). Stopping briefly in Ephesus, across the Aegean Sea, Paul felt a strong pull to engage in a similar church-planting effort there. But he was already committed to his travel plans, so he left Priscilla and Aquila in Ephesus and vowed to return soon (Acts 18:19-21).
It was probably a couple of months later when Paul came back overland through Asia Minor and set up shop in Ephesus (Acts 19:1). Priscilla and Aquila had already established a solid core of converts and new leaders. Among their number was Apollos, a keen and well-schooled Jew from Alexandria who was able to quickly understand how Jesus could be the Jewish Messiah (Acts 18:24-28).
Paul stayed on in Ephesus for more than two years (Acts 19:8-10), carrying out a number of regional mission journeys, and growing a significant Christian presence in the city itself. It was during this time that members from his former congregation in Corinth began a series of contacts that would eventually cause Paul to write two of his most passionate and profound letters of Christian instruction. We know them today as 1 and 2 Corinthians.
Probably sometime in late 51 AD or early 52 AD, Paul sent a letter of strongly worded reproof to the Corinthian congregation. No copies have survived, but from what Paul himself says about it in 1 Corinthians 5:9, it is easy to see why some might take exception to it. Indeed, it appears that a number of people in the congregation began to disown Paul's authority after reading that letter and began to promote factionalism in the community based upon personal preferences about which leaders would each claim as having greater sway among them. Meanwhile, a delegation of three men (Stephanus, Fortunatus, and Achaicus) who were highly respectful of Paul's apostolic authority, traveled from Corinth to Ephesus, bringing to Paul an oral report about the difficulties going on in the church. They also carried a written list of questions that members of the congregation were raising.
Paul quickly wrote a letter of response. Although this was actually his second letter to the Corinthian congregation, it survives as our 1 Corinthians. Immediately in the opening passages Paul addresses the difficulties some have at his continued influence in the congregation. He chastises them for dividing up into parties each waving a banner acclaiming the worthiness of a different leader. These groupings were sinful and disruptive, according to Paul, for they denied the honor that ought to be given only to the true head of the church, Jesus Christ. They also played favorites among human leaders who each have a particular set of gifts for helping the church as a whole to grow.
Paul's words are reminiscent of a true story that happened only a short while ago. A family had not been attending worship services at a particular church for a number of years. The elders of the church had tried, with varying degrees of success, to maintain contact with the family and provide pastoral encouragement.
Finally a new elder, younger and more forthright than some, said to the couple, "Look, it doesn't sound to me like you really want any contact with us. Are we just kidding ourselves? Do you want to be part of this church or not?"
Then they admitted it. There was a sense of some need for spiritual attachments, yes. They certainly weren't non-Christians. And, no, they hadn't given up their faith. But it was true that they didn't want contact from this church again.
Why? What was behind it all? The elder probed a little deeper.
"To tell you the truth," they said, "it has to do with our parents. Every Sunday after we got married, we'd go to one home and then the other for coffee or a meal. We'd sit around one coffee table and we'd hear all the criticisms of the church -- the sermon was no good, the minister wasn't doing his job, theological controversies were dividing the church. Then we'd go to the other parental home and the conversation around the meal table would be the same -- who was doing what to whom, how the church was no good, how the elders and general assembly were making all those wrong decisions.
"We finally got sick of it. We haven't left God; and we are sure that he hasn't left us. But we really don't want to ruin our spirituality anymore by going to that church."
People won't stick with something that talks theology but lives criticism and controversy. It is hard to square critical and divisive spirits with true godliness. This is exactly the problem that made Paul so upset twenty centuries ago.
Paul pointed to the only solution, of course: Jesus. All who love Jesus must eventually learn to love one another. You cannot have the one without the other.
Matthew 4:12-23
The year was 1934. Times were difficult around the world, especially in the repressed economic and political climate of post-World War I Germany. But recovery was in sight. A group of theologians at Wurtemburg saw a rising star of hope and penned together a declaration of faith that would be signed by 600 pastors of churches and fourteen theology professors at seminaries.
Their promising statement included these words: "We are full of thanks to God that he, as Lord of history, has given us Adolf Hitler, our leader and savior from our difficult lot. We acknowledge that we, with body and soul, are bound and dedicated to the German state and to its Fuhrer."
Astounding, isn't it? In retrospect, we can only shudder at the demonic twists of history that could produce such unqualified devotion to a man who would later rip God's world apart, and destroy, insofar as he was able, both the church and children of God.
That same year, 1934, Hitler summoned a group of church leaders to his office. Martin Niemoller was among them. He had been a great hero in the German Navy during World War I, commanding a submarine that caused great destruction to the Allied fleet. Now he was a pastor, much loved in his new vocation.
The meeting with Hitler began cordially enough. Suddenly, however, Hermann Goering burst into the room with a charge of treason against Niemoller. Hitler raged in angry tirade. Finally, he regained his composure and told Niemoller, "You confine yourself to the church. I'll take care of the German people!"
But Niemoller knew the gospel of the kingdom of heaven, and he marched to its challenging beat. He stood quietly and replied, "Herr Reichskanzler, you said just now: 'I will take care of the German people.' But we, too, as Christians and churchmen, have a responsibility toward the German people. That responsibility was entrusted to us by God, and neither you nor anyone in this world has the power to take it from us."
Hitler knew a showdown when he saw it. Niemoller went to trial, and was convicted of misusing his pulpit for political purposes. Hitler refused to pardon him, declaring, "It is Niemoller or I."
Not all political confrontations are that dramatic. No presidential nominee would ask Americans to make a choice between themselves and God. But the gray area of compromise, whether social, economic, emotional, physical, or political, always takes place with the slow staccato of drumbeats in the background. And conflicting rhythms tear at our souls until we find a way to isolate the heartbeat of the God we will follow.
This is the message of Jesus from beginning to end, as presented by Matthew. Nothing could be clearer than that Jesus was the divinely appointed king who would bring to fullness the messianic realm that the prophets had foretold. Already in the opening pages of his gospel, Matthew announces that Jesus is the son of David (1:1), "Immanuel" (1:23), "the king of the Jews" (2:2), the king of all nations (2:1-12), the Son of God (3:17), the defeater of the devil (4:1-11), and the Messiah promised by the prophets (4:14).
Jesus' first preaching is about the impinging presence of the kingdom of heaven on life as we know it here. And then Jesus calls: "Follow me!" Why would we respond like those in Galilee? Why might we not? The answers are found in the treasures of our heart and the values to which we hold in society. Who will we follow? Why? What do we see? Where are we headed? Who are we?
Application
Ours often seems to be a driven society. The ideals of the French Revolution have permeated our culture: Life! Liberty! Land! North Americans have turned the last into a steady pleasure trip by translating it this way: the pursuit of happiness. In so doing we become like the crowds of Isaiah's prophecy, wandering around in the darkness. All too often we are scrambling after more and better and bigger thrills. As Paul notes in his opening words to the Corinthians, this is precisely what divides is into mad mob- ism.
Maybe it is time to return to Jesus who called out to the crowds of Galilee and the fishermen of Capernaum, "Follow me!" Maybe it's time to stop being driven and be led again in the simplicity of devotion.
Alternative Application
Matthew 4:12-23. As we approach the season of Lent it might be good to focus on the gospel call of Jesus: "Follow me!" Richard Lischer's fine reflection, Open Secrets, is a great treasure of insights as to how that can be translated into the daily grind of local pastoral ministry.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 27:1, 4-9
German playwright, Bertolt Brecht, writes, in one of his immortal tunes that "magic fear puts the world at your command." Writing, as he did, in Germany during and after WWII, Brecht knew something of fear. He knew also how fear was used to manipulate people into doing things that they would not normally consider doing at all. The Nazis made effective use of propaganda to make people afraid of the Jews, and were thus able to gain their permission -- and at times full cooperation -- in the extermination of more than eight million human beings.
Fear is a powerful tool, indeed. Advertisers use it to get people to buy things. Governments use it to control populations, and yes, even religion has used it. But the truth is that as a people of faith we are called out of fear and into faith. As this psalm opens it makes clear to us that the antidote to fear is not armaments, protection, or aggression, but faith. "The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?"
For most people, a life free of fear is difficult to imagine. If you are a parent, there are a host of fears centered around raising children. Will they get hurt? Will they be taken advantage of? Will they succeed? Will they be happy? Most parents pour their lives into their children out of love, it's true. Yet, it is also true that this love is mixed with fear. Fear stalks us as we walk the streets, navigate through our careers, or even as we watch the evening news.
Yet here, in these powerful ancient words, liberation from the paralysis of fear is offered. Faith, which in most New Testament translations actually is rendered more accurately as "trust," is the thing that can conquer our fear. A wise preacher once said that "Jesus conquered fear before he conquered death." It's not that Jesus, fully human, was unafraid, it was that he chose trust over fear.
This same option is open to people of faith today. As individuals, we can choose to trust in God and God's way of love rather than give in to the vagaries of fear. In our relationships, too, faith in God can conquer our fear and drive us deeper into love and new beginnings. The same call to trust and faith follows us into life in Christian community, and even into our lives as citizens.
"If the Lord is the stronghold" of life, what can possibly make us afraid? If the Lord is our light, we will see hope, love, courage -- not fear.
In one of his essays, Albert Camus describes a powerful scene. John Huss, the great Czech reformer of the church, is on trial. His accusers twist all his ideas out of shape. They refuse to give him a hearing. They maneuver the political machine against him and incite popular passion to a lynch-mob frenzy. Finally, Huss is condemned to be burned at the stake. As the flames surround him, people who couldn't possibly have read his writings and who have no interest in either his perspectives or those of the governing authorities, line up to assist in the murder. "When they were burning John Huss," writes Camus, "a gentle little old lady came carrying her fagot to add it to the pile."
The tragedy of politics often lies in passions, not platforms. "Private passions grow tired and wear themselves out; political passions, never!" says Lamartine. That's why there is an unwritten rule in many communities that when all the in-laws and out-laws get together for the annual "family rebellion" you can't talk about politics or religion. Both grab a person so deeply!
Maybe, when it comes right down to it, politics and religion are much the same thing. The kingdom of God, as Isaiah and Paul and Jesus note in today's passages, is very political. It's a perspective on all of life. It's a way of holding things together and giving them meaning. It's a movement that is out to change the world, to reclaim lost territory in the civil war of the universe.
That's why Jesus' followers got into trouble with the political leaders of their day. Two visions of reality collided. Two perspectives on life challenged each other. Six times over in the book of Acts, the Christian community is called "The Way." Not "The Society," nor "The Institution," but "The Way"!
The church of Jesus Christ is a political movement. It's on the way to somewhere. Every worship service is a political rally; a time when we refocus our energies, study our political platform and policies, and pay homage to the party leader who calls to us in no uncertain tones: "Follow me!"
Isaiah 9:1-4
Some images dig their way into your mind and stick like glue. Listen to this description of dawn in Texas first published in National Geographic back in 1980:
Anywhere in Texas, the best time is dawn. The sun flares above prairies and sere hills, caressing old Spanish missions, oil fields, remote ranches, the dew-kissed produce of early markets. It searches out the gaudy cities. Their neon signs, so bright with promise only a dusk ago, fade and expire as morning suffuses the sky ... Beside the Brazos River, the mesquites and cottonwoods take shape in the dim pewter light. A creamy fog clings to the bottom lands like a fallen cloud ... The world emerges from the little death of night.
Remember when you stood there one morning? Even if you've never been to Texas, remember when you have experienced that?
There is something powerful about the early morning, something new and vibrant and refreshing. When you stay awake all night, dawn seems to revive you. When you get up early in the morning, dawn welcomes you.
Dawn "comes up like thunder" in one of Kipling's poems, and creeps "rosy-fingered" through the skies, according to Homer. Matthew Arnold remembers the "music" of the "bird-haunted" trees in an English garden at dawn. And who could forget Masefield's (1890) striking images in the poem "Sea Fever":
I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking.
Remember? Even if you are not a morning person, there is something of the dawn that lingers in every great experience you feel. For dawn is the surge of life, and dawn is the power of rebirth, and dawn is the victory of the future over the past.
Leslie Weatherhead once called Christianity "the religion of the dawn." He pointed to the first dawning of light at creation as the irreversible testimony of God to this world. "It is a religion of unquenchable faith and hope and patience; unquenchable because it believes that the permanent thing is light and the passable thing is darkness; that however long the night, whether it be in world affairs or the poignant private world of the human heart, the night will pass."
Then he pointed more specifically to the astounding power of Easter dawn. "After the great darkness, this amazing dawn! Within seven weeks they -- the hunted, frightened fugitives -- had become flaming missionaries and willing martyrs ready to lay down their lives rather than deny the truth of His risen glory and His transforming power ... From the East the dawn-light spread across the skies of the world. The religion of the dawn!"
Isaiah's vision in chapter 9 knows the power of the first dawn and anticipates the courage of the second. He sings a lament with those who have wrestled too long with the night. He hums at the dawn of a new and coming era, one which knows more fully the strength of new life. For the dawn that is arriving is the morning of God's grace and mercy and peace. It is resplendent, exalted above the changing lights of the heavens and defeating the dark shadows that form themselves into the evil tidings of evening newspapers. Isaiah heralds the dawn because it is the promise of greater things that God will yet do.
In fact, it is not the dawn of sun's first glow that awakens any of us this morning, but rather he who awakens the dawn itself. Even in the blackness of midnight hours, when chills attack the bones, when eyesight strains at the mysterious movements of unseen attackers, when ears are bombarded with frightening sounds just at the threshold of distinction, Isaiah takes out his musical instruments and sings a song of grace and love and power. For other dawns remind him of divine strength, and other sunrises warm his heart in anticipation.
Remember?
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
The city of Corinth was located at the southwestern end of the narrow land bridge between Greece's northern and southern mainland regions. It played a vital role for the region in both land and sea trade. It was a wealthy metropolis during the first century AD, and coupled that abundance of resources with many social vices. Sexual openness and experimentation, in particular, oozed out of Corinth, until the rest of the Mediterranean world began to use its name to identify lascivious lifestyles.
Paul's stay in Corinth is quickly told in Acts 18:1-17. He began his missionary sojourn there, as usual, with a time of teaching about Jesus to the Jews in the local synagogue. Paul was eventually forced out by vigorous opponents who refused to acknowledge that Jesus could have been the promised Messiah. Although Paul was no longer permitted to speak in the synagogue, the leader of the synagogue became a believer, as did a good number of its members. From a new location in the house adjacent to the synagogue, and also from his work space in the Corinthian market as a tentmaker, Paul broadened his preaching dialogues with people until a thriving congregation was formed of both Jewish and Gentile converts.
Encouraged by a vision that affirmed divine blessing on his ministry there (Acts 18:9-11), Paul stayed in Corinth at least a year-and-a-half (virtually all of 50 AD and well along into 51 AD). Then he decided to make a report back at his sending church in Syrian Antioch, and took his new friends Priscilla and Aquila along (Acts 18:18). Stopping briefly in Ephesus, across the Aegean Sea, Paul felt a strong pull to engage in a similar church-planting effort there. But he was already committed to his travel plans, so he left Priscilla and Aquila in Ephesus and vowed to return soon (Acts 18:19-21).
It was probably a couple of months later when Paul came back overland through Asia Minor and set up shop in Ephesus (Acts 19:1). Priscilla and Aquila had already established a solid core of converts and new leaders. Among their number was Apollos, a keen and well-schooled Jew from Alexandria who was able to quickly understand how Jesus could be the Jewish Messiah (Acts 18:24-28).
Paul stayed on in Ephesus for more than two years (Acts 19:8-10), carrying out a number of regional mission journeys, and growing a significant Christian presence in the city itself. It was during this time that members from his former congregation in Corinth began a series of contacts that would eventually cause Paul to write two of his most passionate and profound letters of Christian instruction. We know them today as 1 and 2 Corinthians.
Probably sometime in late 51 AD or early 52 AD, Paul sent a letter of strongly worded reproof to the Corinthian congregation. No copies have survived, but from what Paul himself says about it in 1 Corinthians 5:9, it is easy to see why some might take exception to it. Indeed, it appears that a number of people in the congregation began to disown Paul's authority after reading that letter and began to promote factionalism in the community based upon personal preferences about which leaders would each claim as having greater sway among them. Meanwhile, a delegation of three men (Stephanus, Fortunatus, and Achaicus) who were highly respectful of Paul's apostolic authority, traveled from Corinth to Ephesus, bringing to Paul an oral report about the difficulties going on in the church. They also carried a written list of questions that members of the congregation were raising.
Paul quickly wrote a letter of response. Although this was actually his second letter to the Corinthian congregation, it survives as our 1 Corinthians. Immediately in the opening passages Paul addresses the difficulties some have at his continued influence in the congregation. He chastises them for dividing up into parties each waving a banner acclaiming the worthiness of a different leader. These groupings were sinful and disruptive, according to Paul, for they denied the honor that ought to be given only to the true head of the church, Jesus Christ. They also played favorites among human leaders who each have a particular set of gifts for helping the church as a whole to grow.
Paul's words are reminiscent of a true story that happened only a short while ago. A family had not been attending worship services at a particular church for a number of years. The elders of the church had tried, with varying degrees of success, to maintain contact with the family and provide pastoral encouragement.
Finally a new elder, younger and more forthright than some, said to the couple, "Look, it doesn't sound to me like you really want any contact with us. Are we just kidding ourselves? Do you want to be part of this church or not?"
Then they admitted it. There was a sense of some need for spiritual attachments, yes. They certainly weren't non-Christians. And, no, they hadn't given up their faith. But it was true that they didn't want contact from this church again.
Why? What was behind it all? The elder probed a little deeper.
"To tell you the truth," they said, "it has to do with our parents. Every Sunday after we got married, we'd go to one home and then the other for coffee or a meal. We'd sit around one coffee table and we'd hear all the criticisms of the church -- the sermon was no good, the minister wasn't doing his job, theological controversies were dividing the church. Then we'd go to the other parental home and the conversation around the meal table would be the same -- who was doing what to whom, how the church was no good, how the elders and general assembly were making all those wrong decisions.
"We finally got sick of it. We haven't left God; and we are sure that he hasn't left us. But we really don't want to ruin our spirituality anymore by going to that church."
People won't stick with something that talks theology but lives criticism and controversy. It is hard to square critical and divisive spirits with true godliness. This is exactly the problem that made Paul so upset twenty centuries ago.
Paul pointed to the only solution, of course: Jesus. All who love Jesus must eventually learn to love one another. You cannot have the one without the other.
Matthew 4:12-23
The year was 1934. Times were difficult around the world, especially in the repressed economic and political climate of post-World War I Germany. But recovery was in sight. A group of theologians at Wurtemburg saw a rising star of hope and penned together a declaration of faith that would be signed by 600 pastors of churches and fourteen theology professors at seminaries.
Their promising statement included these words: "We are full of thanks to God that he, as Lord of history, has given us Adolf Hitler, our leader and savior from our difficult lot. We acknowledge that we, with body and soul, are bound and dedicated to the German state and to its Fuhrer."
Astounding, isn't it? In retrospect, we can only shudder at the demonic twists of history that could produce such unqualified devotion to a man who would later rip God's world apart, and destroy, insofar as he was able, both the church and children of God.
That same year, 1934, Hitler summoned a group of church leaders to his office. Martin Niemoller was among them. He had been a great hero in the German Navy during World War I, commanding a submarine that caused great destruction to the Allied fleet. Now he was a pastor, much loved in his new vocation.
The meeting with Hitler began cordially enough. Suddenly, however, Hermann Goering burst into the room with a charge of treason against Niemoller. Hitler raged in angry tirade. Finally, he regained his composure and told Niemoller, "You confine yourself to the church. I'll take care of the German people!"
But Niemoller knew the gospel of the kingdom of heaven, and he marched to its challenging beat. He stood quietly and replied, "Herr Reichskanzler, you said just now: 'I will take care of the German people.' But we, too, as Christians and churchmen, have a responsibility toward the German people. That responsibility was entrusted to us by God, and neither you nor anyone in this world has the power to take it from us."
Hitler knew a showdown when he saw it. Niemoller went to trial, and was convicted of misusing his pulpit for political purposes. Hitler refused to pardon him, declaring, "It is Niemoller or I."
Not all political confrontations are that dramatic. No presidential nominee would ask Americans to make a choice between themselves and God. But the gray area of compromise, whether social, economic, emotional, physical, or political, always takes place with the slow staccato of drumbeats in the background. And conflicting rhythms tear at our souls until we find a way to isolate the heartbeat of the God we will follow.
This is the message of Jesus from beginning to end, as presented by Matthew. Nothing could be clearer than that Jesus was the divinely appointed king who would bring to fullness the messianic realm that the prophets had foretold. Already in the opening pages of his gospel, Matthew announces that Jesus is the son of David (1:1), "Immanuel" (1:23), "the king of the Jews" (2:2), the king of all nations (2:1-12), the Son of God (3:17), the defeater of the devil (4:1-11), and the Messiah promised by the prophets (4:14).
Jesus' first preaching is about the impinging presence of the kingdom of heaven on life as we know it here. And then Jesus calls: "Follow me!" Why would we respond like those in Galilee? Why might we not? The answers are found in the treasures of our heart and the values to which we hold in society. Who will we follow? Why? What do we see? Where are we headed? Who are we?
Application
Ours often seems to be a driven society. The ideals of the French Revolution have permeated our culture: Life! Liberty! Land! North Americans have turned the last into a steady pleasure trip by translating it this way: the pursuit of happiness. In so doing we become like the crowds of Isaiah's prophecy, wandering around in the darkness. All too often we are scrambling after more and better and bigger thrills. As Paul notes in his opening words to the Corinthians, this is precisely what divides is into mad mob- ism.
Maybe it is time to return to Jesus who called out to the crowds of Galilee and the fishermen of Capernaum, "Follow me!" Maybe it's time to stop being driven and be led again in the simplicity of devotion.
Alternative Application
Matthew 4:12-23. As we approach the season of Lent it might be good to focus on the gospel call of Jesus: "Follow me!" Richard Lischer's fine reflection, Open Secrets, is a great treasure of insights as to how that can be translated into the daily grind of local pastoral ministry.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 27:1, 4-9
German playwright, Bertolt Brecht, writes, in one of his immortal tunes that "magic fear puts the world at your command." Writing, as he did, in Germany during and after WWII, Brecht knew something of fear. He knew also how fear was used to manipulate people into doing things that they would not normally consider doing at all. The Nazis made effective use of propaganda to make people afraid of the Jews, and were thus able to gain their permission -- and at times full cooperation -- in the extermination of more than eight million human beings.
Fear is a powerful tool, indeed. Advertisers use it to get people to buy things. Governments use it to control populations, and yes, even religion has used it. But the truth is that as a people of faith we are called out of fear and into faith. As this psalm opens it makes clear to us that the antidote to fear is not armaments, protection, or aggression, but faith. "The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?"
For most people, a life free of fear is difficult to imagine. If you are a parent, there are a host of fears centered around raising children. Will they get hurt? Will they be taken advantage of? Will they succeed? Will they be happy? Most parents pour their lives into their children out of love, it's true. Yet, it is also true that this love is mixed with fear. Fear stalks us as we walk the streets, navigate through our careers, or even as we watch the evening news.
Yet here, in these powerful ancient words, liberation from the paralysis of fear is offered. Faith, which in most New Testament translations actually is rendered more accurately as "trust," is the thing that can conquer our fear. A wise preacher once said that "Jesus conquered fear before he conquered death." It's not that Jesus, fully human, was unafraid, it was that he chose trust over fear.
This same option is open to people of faith today. As individuals, we can choose to trust in God and God's way of love rather than give in to the vagaries of fear. In our relationships, too, faith in God can conquer our fear and drive us deeper into love and new beginnings. The same call to trust and faith follows us into life in Christian community, and even into our lives as citizens.
"If the Lord is the stronghold" of life, what can possibly make us afraid? If the Lord is our light, we will see hope, love, courage -- not fear.
