Third Sunday after the Epiphany, 01/27/2008

Sermon on Matthew 4:12-23, by James V. Stockton

It is a simple fact that one of the fastest-growing areas in publishing today is the marketing of the science and art of Church-growth. It is a relatively new area in the history of the Church's self-reflection. And if congregations were able to manufacture numerical growth at a rate comparable at all to the sales of the materials that claim to tell them how to do it, the world would be evangelized tomorrow, Jesus would come again, and we'd all be in heaven by Wednesday. However, Jesus' approach to spreading the Good News is different from this.

There is a legend that concerns Jesus' return to heaven. Still bearing the marks of crucifixion, Jesus meets the angel Gabriel. Gabriel approaches and stares in restrained shock at Jesus' scars. He says to Jesus, "Lord, you've given all for humanity. Jesus answers "Yes, that's true." Gabriel continues: "And does humanity know how much you have given for them, and what you have given to them?" And Jesus replies, "Oh no; not yet. Right now, only a handful of people in Palestine know." Gabriel is puzzled, and asks, "Well, then, what have you done to let people know of your love for them?" Jesus answers, "Well, I think Peter, James, and John, and a few others are starting to get it; and I think they'll start telling others. Once those people get it, then they will tell other people, and the Gospel will spread to the ends of the earth." The angel knows a bit about the stuff of humankind. Gabriel frowns, rather skeptical. "Okay," he says to Jesus. "So what other plans have you made?"

We are here, and thus rightly, I think, you and I view with all due skepticism an engineering approach to church growth in place of a savior's approach to the spread of the Good News of God's Love. Jesus' different approach is right here in our Gospel for today. And thanks be to God, he seems to give it to us free! "Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand." With this bold declaration, Jesus opens his ministry. With this bold call, Jesus begins to gather his followers. Now, right away, you and I may recoil at the prospect of taking up a ministry that calls people to repent. This is especially so if we take repentance to mean that puritanical breast-beating, that ‘woe-is-me' self-loathing. Certainly, whenever and wherever people offend against what it right and true, and contradict what is merciful and just, what is charitable and loving, then yes, indeed, repentance is a call to acknowledge the offense and try to make amends. But Jesus is calling people to more than apologies and regrets. Repentance is to change decisively. In the context of our Christian faith, repentance is to make a decisive change inwardly and outwardly, in mind and in course of action, and move in the new direction that God gives in Jesus. And so, now, Jesus gathers a group of followers, presumably, his friends and acquaintances, and prepares them to be commissioned and trained as his most loyal followers; which means that he is calling them to take a profoundly new direction in life. And something within them responds, perhaps by what Archbishop William Temple once called the highest human instinct, the instinct to worship God, and they follow.

If we think about it, we find that in many ways, the instincts of the life of faith in God seem to blend rather nicely with the instincts and culture of the everyday life of the world. For instance, people seeking to become united as a couple, do not absolutely need to involve the life of faith. And people wishing to memorialize their loved ones who have died, do not absolutely need to involve the life of faith. Nevertheless, in times of joy people do seek God's blessing in a context of the life of faith. People do seek God's consolation in times of grief in the context of the life of faith. Perhaps this is because such occasions are intersections of everyday life with eternity; and so they are moments that concern that natural human instinct to acknowledge and worship God. And so, it is only natural, that at such moments people are drawn by that counter culture of the life of faith. Maybe this suggests to us that part of our calling as the Church is to attend for ourselves and to describe for others such intersections, great and small, where daily life and eternity meet.

But even if they meet, nevertheless, the instincts and culture of the life of faith in God and those of a life that is apathetic toward God, more often contradict. In the times of the prophet Isaiah, God reminds the people that it has always been the case that God would speak and the prophets would convey to the people God's guidance and love. God reminds the people that it is a natural process; it is instinctive. But the people are turning, repenting if you will, from that humble piety with which they entered the promised land; and now, in their greatest era as an empire, they are turning to a thin veneer of cultural religion. And if it's natural for God's prophets to speak God's words, it's just as natural that, as they know they are violating their relationship with God, people would seek to respond to their spiritual needs, but in ways more culturally grounded and approved, ways less costly to themselves, and accountable to no one but themselves. And it is just as natural that when God's Kingdom comes undeniably near, that they might flee to a walk in the darkness in fear of God.

It is perhaps likewise natural that the people of the early church would turn aside from the higher instinct of worshipping God with one another to lesser instincts that move them to compete with one another around their differences. If it is natural to stand in awe of the cross of Christ, it is just as natural seek one's own awe and cultural stature based upon, in the case of the apostle Paul and the Corinthians, such silliness as who baptizes whom.

But if the instincts of the people of God can give way to such lesser instincts of life as arrogance, fear, anger, and contention, nevertheless, as Isaiah makes clear, God still speaks to the people; as Paul tells us, the cross is still there. Even in a prophetic warning, even in the stark and jolting image of the cross, God's instinct remains the same. We are God's people; God is our God. And somewhere, somehow, God bringsGod's Kingdom near, and raises up in people the higher instinct to worship Him. Jesus knows it will be costly for those whom he calls, as it has been and is for him. But he also knows that the fact that your life and mine no longer fits with the world is precisely God's intention. He calls us out of a dominant culture that would have us settle for a low-cost imitation of life with God and an engineered growth in number or spirit. He calls us past the instinctive fear of the unknown and the unknowable about God to a higher instinct of awe and worship.

We live in the world as a view to God's Kingdom, an intersection sometimes, often necessarily a contrast, a counter-culture responding to a higher instinct. Beyond the human instinct to seek mastery over one another, God nurtures a higher instinct. By it we respond to the presence of God's Kingdom in the here-and-now, and by it God grows a counter-culture, and thanks be to God, only God knows how. As desirous as a sense of mastery over life may be, the counter-culture of the life of faith embraces the mysteries and limitations inherent to being human. It understands these limitations not as bonds to sever as we pursue some culturally approved formula for success, but as that mystery by which God holds us together as we support one another in our common repentance, and join each other to turn and follow Jesus. God's instinct remains the same. God is our God; we are God's people.

Returned to Heaven, Jesus talks with the angel Gabriel. "I think people are starting to realize what I've given them. Peter, James, and John, and a few others are starting to get it; and I think they'll start telling others; then they will tell other people, and the Gospel will spread to the ends of the earth." Gabriel is skeptical, "So what other plans have you made?" he asks. And Jesus' answer is: "I've made no other plans. I trust them."

In our successes and our disappointments, in our attacks of panic and in our best-conceived plans, God calls us to search within, and draw upon that highest of human instincts; and God gives us a vow that when we do, we will always find reason to worship God.

And so may Almighty God, who unites us in the holy bond of truth and peace, of joy and charity, grant to us the gift of that faith that was born in the heart of Christ our Savior, that it may overflow our own, and bless the hearts and lives around us; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Rev. James V. Stockton
Episcopal Church of the Resurrection
Austin, Texas

E-Mail: jstockton@sbcglobal.net

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