Pilgrim Preaching

Do Not Be Afraid

Advent 4A | December 19, 2004

Matthew 1:18-25

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Are you the one...?"

Advent 3A | December 12, 2004

Matthew 11:2-11

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jesus and the Peaceable Kingdom

Advent 2A | December 5, 2004

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

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

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

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

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

The Element of Surprise

Advent 1A | November 28, 2004

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Magnifying the Lord

Luke 1:39-45 (46-55)

Here are a few miscellaneous comments on the story of Mary & Elizabeth & their baby boys.

Willimon and the stuff that's really hard to believe.

My favorite comment on Luke 1 comes from Will Willimon. He tells the story of a college student talking to him about how the virgin birth was just too incredible to believe. Willimon responded, "You think that's incredible, come back next week. Then, we will tell you that 'God has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.' We'll talk about the hungry having enough to eat and the rich being sent away empty. The virgin birth? If you think you have trouble with the Christian faith now, just wait. The virgin birth is just a little miracle; the really incredible stuff is coming next week."

Place, Time and Luke the Storyteller

Reading the first verse of this text ("In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country...") reminded me of the opening lines of Luke's introduction of John the Baptist (Luke 3:1ff.), except that it's not the emperor, the governor and the regions over which Herod and his family reign that Luke mentions here. Instead, we see the hill country of Judea and hear from an old woman and a girl. Could it be that already in the introduction, the mighty are cast down? They are, in fact, nowhere to be seen in this moment.

Singing the Story

Preaching through the Christian Year has a couple of very nice quotes springing from the fact that our gospel this week is a song. Here they are:

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"If there are Sundays when the church senses that the Scripture readings are distant from the life and mood of the congregation, today is not one of them. As music and song fill the Advent Season, so has Luke chosen to sing rather than explain or prove or exhort in our Gospel lection…. "In movement, Mary's song makes an easy transition from the remarkable act of God to and through Mary to the remarkable act of God by which all the oppressed, poor, and hungry of the world will be blessed …. [S]o confident is the singer's faith that God's justice and grace will prevail that the expression of hope is cast in the past tense. Mary sings as though what shall be is already true. In this trust, God's servants continue to sing" (Preaching through the Christian Year C, 25).

On Fire & Expectation

Luke 3:7-18

I remembered this sermon when I read the gospel text for this week. I preached it at a Holy Communion service in Luther Seminary chapel during Advent of 2000. --mh

Title: What Part of "Fire" Don't You Understand?

I have been trying to imagine John the Baptist presiding at a seeker service. I imagine him saying, “Welcome to worship this morning. And if this is your first time worshipping here along the banks of the Jordan, we would extend a special welcome to you. We're glad you're here.”

By the way, I have no explanation for why I hear John saying all this in a North Carolina accent. Of course, both the speech and the accent are pure fantasy on my part. Nothing even remotely like this ever appears in accounts of John's ministry. The only sermon we have from him begins not with a welcome, but with an attack: To the crowds coming for baptism, John says, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

If is as if you were visiting a congregation one Sunday, and in the narthex, before the service, a man walks up to greet you. You expect, “Won't you sign our guest book?” but instead you hear, “What rock did you slither out from under?”

Thank Edges for God

Luke 3:1-6

Early in The Dark Interval, John Dominic Crossan explains the difference between myth, which creates an understandable worldview, and parable, which subverts the understandable and expected. Parable exists at the edge of the way we know the world to be. It is familiar enough that we can grasp it, but unfamiliar enough to change everything when we do. Crossan says that God is in this overturning of our expectations and he writes that the point is not so much to say, "Thank God for edges," as "Thank edges for God." It is at the edges of known and unknown that God is revealed.

It's the edges in the gospel text that caught my eye. We start in the center—or centers—of political power: the emperor, the governor, high priests, Rome, Jerusalem, etc. All the usual suspects are present. But then there is a move to the edges: we're in the wilderness, beside a river. It may not be news to you, but the contrast in the text between the long descriptions of the high and mighty in 3:1-2a and then "John son of Zechariah in the wilderness" in v. 2b is still way cool. The Roman emperor, the governor, various mid-level bureaucrats, and even a couple of high priests become window dressing, backdrop, blur. Meanwhile, the focus comes to rest on the word of God coming to John and John speaking it, not in the temple, or Jerusalem, or Rome, but down at the edge of the river.

If God were to make God's self known from the edges where you live or work, what would it look like? A friend of mine was busted on his second day of work in a new place when a female coworker mentioned to him that he always looked at their male colleague when he spoke, never at her. My friend had unconsciously figured out where the power was likely to be. He was angling toward the center, focused on the power. Who do you look at for direction, approval or a share of power?

More importantly, if we're trying to find the edge that could reveal God, who do you not look at? From what or whom do you avert your eye? Maybe the homeless man at the edge of the freeway off ramp is an example. Remember that the point of the exercise is not to look at the man and his "will work for food" sign in order to see how you (from the center) can help him (at the edge), but to look at him in order to see what he knows about God that you do not know. "Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight his path." What does this man know about the Lord and his path that cannot be seen except from the edge where he stands? Standing there with him for a while could be a place to start to answer that question. Asking him what he sees and hears there could help too.

Maybe there is someplace else, or lots of other places, you would define as the edge instead of the center of power. Stand there, if you can, listening for what the word of God sounds like from that place. You might hear something that will preach.

Cleaning Up

Malachi 3:1-4

Here is a worthwhile article on this week's OT reading: Frederick J. Gaiser, "Refiner's Fire and Laundry Soap: Images of God in Malachi 3:1-4," Word & World 19/1 (1999): 83-91. While many other Word & World issues are on the web already, the Winter 1999 issue is unfortunately not among them.

In the article, Gaiser talks about how reading and preaching this text in Zimbabwe has changed the way he sees its central images. First, a refiner's fire: "God is like that, says Malachi. A blazing fire. Hot and close," burning away faults that are as much a part of us as our virtues are. The image is industrial and (one might add cautiously) traditionally masculine. Paired with refiner's fire is laundry soap. God is like that, too: "a washer-woman, bent on cleaning up her family. Like fire, laundry soap, too, is a form of tough love," Gaiser notes (89).

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Amid the disappointments and cynicism of present reality, Malachi sees, longs for, hopes for, proclaims a world of goodness and purity, where justice finally matters and integrity finally prevails. God is faithful, says Malachi, and will usher in such a world—even if it takes fire and water to get us there. The New Testament announces that God does just this in the preaching of John the Baptist and the ministry of Jesus. Faithful Christian preachers will want to say the same. But they will need to do it in ways that communicate, in ways that make people pause before this big and lovingly angry God, a God who will never condone but will also never give up, a God of covenant. Frederick J. Gaiser, "Refiner's Fire and Laundry Soap: Images of God in Malachi 3:1-4," Word & World 19/1 (1999): 87.