June 22, 2008
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Jeremiah 20:7-13 and Matthew 10:26-39
This Ain’t No Cruise Ship
Jesus taught us to love our neighbors as ourselves, but he never said it was going
to be easy. In fact, the Bible is filled with descriptions of the costs as well as the joys of
discipleship.
Disciple-ship is not a ship that glides smoothly over perpetually calm waters with
never a storm in sight. Disciple-ship doesn’t provide voyagers with endless distraction
from the harsh realities of our world. Disciple-ship doesn’t stop to visit only the pretty
ports of call, avoiding the places of suffering or turmoil. Somewhere between the
midnight buffet and the deck chairs it hits me…. There is no midnight buffet! There are
no deck chairs! ‘Cause this ain’t no cruise ship! Although there are joys to be celebrated
on this voyage, that’s not the only reason we’ve come aboard.
As our journey continues I notice that some of the passengers are dressed in well
worn clothing that’s more than a few years past being stylish. And not all of my fellow
travelers have had access to higher education, or even an adequate primary and secondary
school education. Some of them could benefit from a visit to the dentist, but they can’t
even afford minimal health care, let alone a dental plan. All of us aboard ship collectively
represent a true slice of humanity. We come in all shapes, sizes, ages and colors and don’t
necessarily share the same definition of “beauty” or “family.” We speak different
languages and with different accents. But we make the effort to listen to each other with
respect, and to learn from one another. Some of the crew members are differently-abled,
this one with an eye patch, and that one with a hook replacing a lost hand. Somewhere
between me shivering timbers and an irresistible urge to say Aarrrrgh, it hits me. This
ain’t no cruise ship. However this is a love boat.
Now You Tell Me
It would be great to sift through the Bible and focus only on all the happy texts,
the sunshine and flowers and God is love and love your neighbor and Easter morning.
But all of the uplifting stuff loses its punch without the struggle it takes to reach it. So
we hear this morning that Jesus tells the disciples that they are basically going to be
miserable doing this work he’s called them to do. They can expect to be cut off from
family and friends. What they do and preach will separate their listeners from their
family and friends. Seeing them do God’s work in this world is likely to make some
people angry.
The disciples have left their lives behind. They’ve left their work, their fishing
boats, to sign on with an entirely different kind of crew. They’ve been told they will
learn to fish for people (4:18-22). In recent weeks they’ve witnessed the healings and sat
at the feet of the great teacher. Then they were commissioned to go out into the world
and do some of this same work themselves in the name of the teacher and the God that
they all served. Now Jesus reveals the down side of the arrangement.
A new kind of family
Jesus’ message is divisive. In verses 35 and 36 (Matt 10:35-36) he says,
“For I have come to set a man against his father,
And a daughter against her mother
And a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members
of one’s own household.”
These words echo the Hebrew prophet Micah’s lament over a corrupt society in (Micah)
7:6
“for the son treats the father with contempt,
the daughter rises up against her mother,
the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
your enemies are members of your own household.”
Is Jesus the cause of the division? Or does Jesus’ presence expose the corruption in
society? Are we being challenged to reconsider how we define family? Is there a bond
stronger than blood; a commitment deeper than marriage? Who is our true family?
Where is our ultimate loyalty?
Micah is clear about his loyalty. In verse 7:7 Micah continues,
“But as for me, I will look to the Lord,
I will wait for the God of my salvation;
My God will hear me.”
Last week I mentioned that Matthew’s gospel is well organized into a series of
narratives and discourses. That is, the story of Jesus’ journey and activities interspersed
between sermons. Our passage today is drawn from the second sermon in Matthew,
sometimes called “the Mission Sermon.” The mission sermon is preceded by a narrative
about miracles and healings and exorcisms. People began to follow Jesus because of the
wonderful deeds they witnessed him doing. By this point in the gospel, Jesus has already
calmed the storm at sea (8:23-27), which maybe should’ve been the disciple’s first clue
that this discipleship stuff might not be smooth sailing. In this mission sermon Jesus
affirms that this journey isn’t going to be a holiday cruise. His followers will be
persecuted. Even their loved ones may reject them.
Tension is a signature of Matthew’s gospel as he was writing to a community that
was facing persecution. The tension escalates through Matthew’s narration with more
and more intense confrontations between Jesus and the authorities. This brand new
community of believers still considered itself Jewish, and was involved in disagreements
between various Jewish groups (~70 CE) over which laws and traditions would guide the
Jewish people in the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. Important to
note that, according to Jewish historian Josephus, a contemporary of Matthew, the
Pharisees that Matthew maligns and sets his Messiah against, were very popular with the
people. They were instrumental in the establishment of Rabbinic Judaism after the
destruction of the Temple, and were thus responsible for the survival of Judaism when
ritual, sacrifice and worship at the Temple were no longer possible. The tension in
Matthew needs to be read as inter-Jewish conflict, not as Christian / Jewish conflict.
Jeremiah’s lament
No one knew the challenges of following God’s call better than the prophet
Jeremiah. His writing offers us a window into the prophet’s life with several laments
incorporated within the text of the book that bears his name. When he tries not to speak
for his own safety’s sake, Jeremiah tells us that his bones feel as if they are on fire. His
bones – the very structure that frames his being and what will be the last remnant of him
after he’s dead – his bones burn in witness to the truth of God.
In the end a lament is an expression of faith as we just heard from Micah who
continued to “look to the Lord.” The lamenter seems to be checking in to make sure God
is going to follow through with God’s commitment to support the faithful. After
expressing his complaint, even his despair, Jeremiah expresses his faith that God will be
with him “like a dread warrior” (“mighty champion,” IB). It is God who will prevail over
Jeremiah’s enemies, who are synonymous with the enemies of God and the enemies of
the people about whom Jeremiah cares so deeply. Jeremiah knows this in his bones.
In Jeremiah’s first personal lament (11:18 – 12:6) he is reflecting on a plot against
his life in which he discovers that “even your kinsfolk and your own family, even they
have dealt treacherously with you; do not believe them, though they speak friendly words
to you” (Jeremiah 12:6). It is the fifth lament that we heard this morning. “For whenever
I speak, I must cry out, I must shout, ‘Violence and destruction!’” (Jeremiah 20:8) Well,
that’s no way to win a popularity contest, as Jeremiah discovered. But Jeremiah could
see what was coming; he was able to observe the events as they unfolded and predict that
the military super power on the march during that time period would eventually reach
Jerusalem. The northern kingdom of Israel had already been conquered by the Assyrians
in 722 BCE. Jeremiah was active in the southern kingdom of Judah on the eve of Judah’s
capture by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. Shouting “violence and destruction” was a
warning of the inevitable, but nobody wanted to believe it, or even hear it. In fact there
were other prophets predicting that Judah would prevail. It was much easier to listen to
them. What might have contributed to making Jeremiah less credible was that he was an
outsider to the established leadership. Jeremiah was connected to a group of outcast
priests operating outside of the Jerusalem Temple system.
I won’t say, “I told you so”
Prophets will preach gloom and doom and a message that people would rather not
hear, and certainly would rather not heed. But a prophet never says, “I told you so!”
You can’t have a holier than thou attitude and be a prophet, or a disciple. Rather the
prophet/disciple stands with the people, bearing the very hardship and pain that she has
warned the people would come. Matthew’s Jesus tells us that it’s about self-sacrifice –
“those who loose their life for my sake will find it” (Matt 10:39b). In these verses
Matthew plays with the imagery of death and rebirth. We are called to strip off what
doesn’t matter, giving up our old way of being in the world. Jesus calls us to strip down
to our very bones and to put on Christ thus becoming new life forms who live for other
people.
The dread warrior has got your back
The dread warrior has got your back when you speak truth to power we need to
remember that the victory is already won. We’re just trying to do the best we can to get
to that time when the future we’ve been promised is actualized on earth.
Several years ago there was a film made entitled Romero, which chronicles the
story of Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero. Maybe some of you have seen it, Raul
Julia played the title role. In the film there is a scene in which Romero makes three
attempts to retrieve the communion hosts from a small village church that has been
occupied by National Guard troops who use it as a headquarters and barracks. The first
two attempts are failures, as the soldiers inside rough up the priest and shoot at him when
he attempts to collect the consecrated elements. Romero gets into his car and drives
away. A minute later the car returns and he gets out. This time he puts on his vestments.
And this time, the villagers follow him into the church. It is as if the assembled body of
Christ accompanies Romero into the church to retrieve the communion body of Christ.
The dread warrior himself was re-membered by the village people. The spirit of Christ
was embodied by the people.
Jeremiah reported an embodied experience when he said he felt, “something like a
burning fire shut up in my bones.” Jeremiah didn’t simply have an idea, this wasn’t
simply a thought in his mind. The continuation of his mission to proclaim the truth wasn’t
a case of rational decision making, but a response to an embodied passion that he was
unable to conceal or contain, even at the risk of his own personal safety
What burns in your bones? What are you absolutely compelled to talk about,
speak against, challenge, question or resist? What empowers you to do so?
The lesson for today
Jeremiah was speaking to a community facing the destruction of the first Temple
in Jerusalem. Matthew’s community was struggling after the destruction of the second
(rebuilt) Temple. Both destructions resulted is a disorientation of the people and the faith
tradition since Jewish culture, ethnicity and national identity were inseparable. But what
do these passages have to say to a worship community today? The settings of these
passages is complicated, so is our world today. People had options of what to value and
who follow, so do we today.
In the 21st century, churches here in the United States struggle to stay relevant, to
stay viable in a shifting world just as for Jeremiah and Matthew’s communities.
Destruction of the Jerusalem Temple may not be unlike what we are experiencing as in
our current climate there is a general mistrust of institutions, and the institutional church
in particular has lost some credibility and respect. I love the United Church of Christ but
at the same time I wonder about the future of denominations as the way to organize
churches. This is an exciting time to participate in church life as we work out in
individual congregations, in denominations and ecumenically what it means to be church
in the 21st century. Clearly some practices and programs are not working. While other
traditions and practices need to be retained. We may differ amongst ourselves over
which are which but we need to continue to be in conversation with each other. And it
could be that each of church group has a slightly different role to play in the larger
scheme of things, but we need to all stay true to the core teaching of love – love in our
bones will keep us true to the gospel good news.
You don’t need no ticket; just get on board
Even though Matthew frames the conflict between Jesus and the established
religious authorities in his gospel to reflect the experience of his community, there’s no
doubt that the historical Jesus raised a ruckus of some sort. It would be easier if Jesus had
been all about peace, love, miracles and healings during his time on earth, if his presence
had brought nothing but smooth sailing. But where Jesus went, a storm brewed. His
very presence rocked the boat. And just like Jeremiah, it wasn’t long before people were
conspiring to kill him to shut him up.
So let us be prepared for the discord and the negative responses. Let us be
prepared for adversity as we continue to follow the passion, the fire in the bones that
can’t be extinguished. We can try to ignore it, medicate it, and distract ourselves from it.
But if we are true to our authentic selves we will follow that call to maybe be less
popular.
Discipleship - This ain’t no cruise ship, but it is a fishing boat, for it casts its nets
wide to gather in new passengers and crew. This ain’t no cruise ship, but it is a pirate ship,
as there are surely some who will be afraid to see us pull along side and those who will
resist parting with some of their material wealth and privilege. This ain’t no cruise ship,
but it is a freedom schooner, for its cargo is the truth that leads to liberation. This ain’t no
cruise ship, but it is a love boat, for love is the currency on board and in every port of call.
Let the mateys of God say, “Aaarrrgh!”
Let the people of God say, “Amen.”
Sermon 06/22/2008