God messes stuff up (Sermon 1-23-11)

Matthew 4:12-23
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How do you deal with stress? What are your habits? I don’t mean like chewing your fingernails popping your knuckles, but time consuming ways of managing stress. For example, some people, when the world gets to be too much for them, go exercise, maybe out for a run, or out for a game of golf. Others might read a book, or veg out in front of the TV, some form of escapism. Some people have projects they work on, like building something, or getting some place organized. Most folks use a combination of any of these and more depending on how the mood suits them.


​As a teenager, I was, and to some extent still am, a type B personality. Thus, whenever I was dealing with stress in some form or another, my usual habit was to tune out of reality and tune into either a TV show, or a book, or music. Now that I’m older and finally starting to approach some semblance of adulthood, that’s still my knee-jerk reaction. However, I’m finding now that my old escapist methods aren’t quite as effective as they used to be.

​Now, it seems, I need to do more than just sit and star with a blank expression on my face for a couple hours. I need to actually get up and do something, like a workout, or, Heaven forbid, clean something (here, my Mom, who was in the congregation today, began laughing uncontrollably). Last week alone I cleared out the garage once, and cleaned in the kitchen twice. This week I think I’m going to tackle the office, just because last week felt so good. I never expected it, but it seems like I need to do something productive to feel like I’ve returned to balance.

​And I wonder if that wasn’t what Andrew and Simon were doing on the Sea of Galilee the day Jesus finds them there. Keeping busy so that they feel some sense of balance again.

​Here’s what’s happened up to this point in the story. John the Baptist has been out baptizing in the wilderness. Jesus then comes and is baptized by John, directly there after going into the wilderness to fast for forty days and to be tempted by the devil. We pick up in Matthew where he writes:

12Now when he heard that(A) John had been arrested,(B) he withdrew into Galilee.

​So, somewhere between departing into the wilderness and now, John has been arrested. Now, as you know, John’s role as the last prophet of the Old Covenant was to be the prophetic voice which prepares the way for Christ. Throughout the Gospels we see that Jesus has a very deep love for John. And, of course, according to the Gospel of Luke‘s nativity story, Jesus and John were related; they were cousins of some sort.

​But more importantly than that, they were on the same mission, in a sense, just different legs of it. This transition from John’s ministry of preparation to Jesus’ ministry of fulfilling is a paradigm shift. John has honored his end of the arrangement, he had proclaimed the coming of the Lord, identified Christ (as we saw last week) and then was put in prison. John continues to be involved in Matthew’s Gospel, sending some of his followers to ask a few questions of Jesus later. He doesn’t disappear from the story until chapter 14 when he’s executed by Herod. But his ministry, once Christ has come, is essentially at an end; he has declared the coming of the Kingdom of God and has identified the Christ.

​Now it’s time for Christ to step in, for the actual reign of the Kingdom of God to begin. But it’s interesting what He does here. When I preached straight through the Gospel of Luke last year for the kids out at Gibault, one of the things I noticed was how Christ would alternate between taking things head on and taking things easy. By easy I don’t mean easy for Him but easy on those around Him. If you know the history behind the concept of the Kingdom of God in first-century Jewish thought, you know that it was a pretty volatile subject. There was a lot of bloodshed going on because other so-called “messiahs” were trying to enact their version of the Kingdom by attempting to overthrow the Roman presence in the Jerusalem.

​But we, as Christians, know that that is not what the Kingdom, nor Jesus, was about. The true Kingdom of God was not going to come that way, it is not and was not to be a Kingdom “of this earth” as Jesus puts it before Pilate. So he’s very careful not to get swept up into the various hotbeds of military action while simultaneously proclaiming the actual Kingdom. So we see Jesus withdraw into Galilee, and that word “withdrew,” I’m not going to even bother trying to pronounce in the Greek, but it often means to escape from danger. Jesus is in the area of the Jordan where John is baptizing, He hears that John has been arrested, and He decides this area is not the place to be right now.

​So He withdraws into Galilee to begin His ministry. That’s another odd and particularly symbolic choice. He withdraws from a Jewish area into Galilee, an area heavily populated with Gentiles. Galilee was the Northern part of Israel where the lines between Jewish culture and Gentile culture began to blur. So, He begins the ministry which is the fulfillment of the purpose of Israel out amongst people not of Israel. From the outset, Jesus is going to start the Kingdom amongst “all the wrong sort of people.” Thus fulfilling the prophecy which Matthew mentions next:

Galilee of the Gentiles—
16(I) the people dwelling in darkness
  have seen a great light,
and for those dwelling in the region and(J) shadow of death,
  on them a light has dawned."

​And it is here that Jesus picks up the same line that John had been preaching in the wilderness near the Jordan:

17(K) From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, (L) "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

​The phrase “from that time on” signifies a turning point. From that time on Jesus was going to step in to change people; He steps in to change their hearts, to change their lives, to change their perception of the Kingdom, to reveal to them the Good News of God. He did that then, and He continues to do it now, for us.

​He’s come to preach the Kingdom, the real Kingdom, the Kingdom as God, not man, has always planned it to be; the Kingdom as it is in Him, the Kingdom as the act of the Lamb of God, as John told us last week, the Kingdom as a taking away of sin and everything that is tied to it. He tells us to repent, a word which means to turn away from yourself and whatever you’re doing.

​And in the midst of His preaching, He comes across two brothers working in their boat:

18(M) While walking by(N) the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.

​Now, if you remember from last week, after John had identified Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, the one who had come to take away the sins of the world and baptize with the Holy Spirit, some of his disciples went after Jesus to “observe Him.” They wanted to see where and how He was living, what He was about, et cetera. And, if you remember, Andrew was one of those disciples.

​He, of course, went along and collected his brother Simon, who would later be called Peter, to meet Him. I’d be inclined to believe that if Simon wasn’t a disciple of John’s, he probably was still closely attached to the movement.

​So, here we have two men closely associated with the ministry of John the Baptist, following him presumably, and harkening to his message that the Kingdom of God is on it’s way. John points to someone else, and then what happens? John, this guy they’ve attached themselves to, perhaps interrupted their lives for, gets arrested. That’s likely to leave a pretty big void in their lives. So, what do they do?

​They go back to what they know. They return to their productive, normal lives, and try to, perhaps, get back to some sense of balance. This won’t be the last time they do this either. We know the rest of the story. We know that three years from now, when all of a sudden it seems as if Jesus has disappeared from their lives too, we’ll find them again going back to fishing, and Jesus again appearing to them on the seashore, calling them once again to follow Him.

​It seems, in a funny way, as if God just won’t leave these guys alone. They’re fisherman, not rich, but making a living; a tough, but relatively stable living. And then God steps in, not once, not twice, but three times, He comes in and messes it all up. And I guess, in a way, that’s what God does. We try to get some stability, some sense of having things just the way we like it, and He just won’t leave us alone, will He?

​He sees us in our attempts to take the world as we like to it, to have the things that either we enjoy, or make us feel comfortable, and He decides He wants to give us true joy, true comfort.

​He goes out amongst those who are living in the shadow of death, as verse 16 put it, who, some of them perhaps, are not even aware of the darkness, and others who have returned to their comfortable coping mechanisms to deal with it, and calls to them.

​He catches up with them and calls to them “follow me.” It’s one of only two imperatives, two commands, in this passage, the other being “repent.” Now, normally we think of an imperative as being followed up by either a promised reward or a promised consequence, a “do this or else.” In fact, when John was preaching “repent for the Kingdom of God is coming,” that seems to be exactly the way it comes across, at least to some. As I mentioned before, thats why John rebukes the Pharisees and the Sadducees in the way he does, asking them “who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?”

​But that is not the case here. At first glance, it may seem similar to John’s message, or his approach. But when Jesus says “Repent!” and then to Andrew and Simon, “Follow!” It isn’t followed by a threat or a reward, rather it is followed by a proclamation, a declaration of fact.

​They are both declarations about God and what He is doing. “Follow me,” He says, “because I am going to make you fishers of men.” I am going to make you my disciples. He declares it. It’s just the same as when we talked about resolutions a few weeks ago; we have a 12% success rate in achieving them, but we all know what God’s success rate is when He says something, don’t we? 100%, all the time, never fails.

​He lets us know, by His words and His actions, that He is going to come into our lives again and again and again, and mess things up. He’s going to carry us, or drag us kicking and screaming if you like, through the whole muddy process of being a disciple. Cope with it, try as you might, but it’s simply what He is going to do. When Andrew and Simon thought they were finished with John, God decides that He’s not finished with them.

​“Repent” He says, “look to me, because God has brought His Kingdom here.” And we see at the end of this passage exactly what kind of Kingdom that is, don’t we?

23(P) And he went throughout all Galilee,(Q) teaching in their synagogues and(R) proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and(S) healing every disease and every affliction among the people.

​The only real balance, the truest of productivity, because it is His productivity, the real answer to all life’s stresses, the Good News of God’s Grace has come. Follow Him, put your trust in the gracious intervention of God into human existence. In a way, it’s almost not an imperative at all; it’s an invitation. If you place a feast before a starving man, do you really need to command him to sit and eat? If you place the grace of God before folks who know they need it, is it a demand, or a blessing, when you say “follow me, this way”?