American Blessing: A Failed Narrative

Brad Sullivan

3 Epiphany, Year A

Sunday, January 26, 2014

St. Mark’s, Bay City, TX

Isaiah 9:1-4
Psalm 27:1, 5-13

1 Corinthians 1:10-18
Matthew 4:12-23

There are really two stories being told in Matthew’s Gospel story this morning.  One is the story of Jesus getting his first disciples and the story of how Matthew chose to tell this story…not simply with the action itself, but through the lens of prophecy and fulfillment.

Jesus called to these young fishermen and told them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”  I wondered, what did they use as a net?  What did they throw out there?  How did they actually go about fishing for people?  Well, we’re told at the end of the passage that, “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.”

That’s a pretty good net, curing every disease and every sickness.  After Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension, however, what net did the disciples use?  There were some healings, but they didn’t continue to the same degree with which Jesus was healing people with his own two hands.  So what was the disciples’ net which they fished for people?  My guess is their net was teaching and the proclaiming of good news of the kingdom, which has continued ever since.

So what were they teaching?  What narrative, what story?  This is where the way in which Matthew tells this story is instructive.  Matthew tells us that when Jesus went to the land of Zebulun and Naphtali, that the words of the prophet Isaiah were fulfilled.  The scripture he’s quoting is from Isaiah 9:1-2

The names Zebulun and Naphtali are instructive; they are tribes of Israel, children of Abraham whose names mean “honor” and “wrestle”.  Israel will be honored once more.  They will wrestle with their enemies and win.  This prophecy was fulfilled during the reign of king Hezekiah, hundreds of years before the time of Jesus.  Hezekiah’s reign was a time when Israel became faithful to God again after the atrocities of his father, Ahaz’s reign.  Hezekiah restored covenant faithfulness to God, brought honor back to Israel, and when an Assyrian king tried to invade, Israel wrestled with them and won.

Isaiah 9 was fulfilled with Hezekiah as king, through covenant faithfulness to God and through military victory.  Matthew, when using the Isaiah 9 passage to talk about Jesus, however, knew that Jesus did not bring about any kind of military victory.  As far as driving out the Romans goes, Jesus lost, mightily.  Something other than military victory gave honor to Israel in Matthew’s eyes…covenant faithfulness to God and the presence of God within their midst in the person of Jesus. 

Isaiah 9 was fulfilled through Jesus in a different way than it was fulfilled centuries before.  A different narrative was being told.  In the previous narrative, one could identify blessing by God by seeing obvious outward signs of blessing:  wealth, power, prestige, etc.  Israel had these under the reign of Hezekiah.  As a counter narrative, Matthew (and Jesus before him) was telling the story that covenant faithfulness to God was its own blessing and it would not necessarily bring wealth, power, or prestige.  Rather, covenant faithfulness to God brought blessings of peace amidst suffering, contentment without great wealth, and confidence of eternal life in God even in death.

Outwardly, people may not seem blessed by the narrative Matthew (and Jesus) told.  On the inside, however, if you got to know the people, you would see their blessings…love, hope, faith, peace, confidence, contentment.

I look at the narratives in America, and look at the story of our country, and one of our dominant narratives in America is the narrative of each successive generation being better off than the generation before it.  Each successive generation would have a little more financial prosperity than the preceding generation.  It is a compelling societal narrative, which, ultimately, seeks to alleviate suffering.  The next generation will have what we didn’t so they won’t suffer in ways that we did.

We now have more stuff and more wealth than we know what to do with.  The challenge is, stuff and wealth don’t actually bring us peace and contentment.  They don’t actually alleviate our suffering because we aren’t designed to be soothed by stuff.  We’re made to be in relationship with others, to be soothed and blessed by people. 

As a nation, we have achieved immense wealth, power, and prestige.  From the outside, we look to be immensely blessed.  The immensity of our wealth and the vastness of our treasures have not seemed to bless us inwardly, however, with love, hope, faith, peace, confidence, contentment.  Our wealth, power, and prestige haven’t stamped out suffering or worry, fear or anxiety.  Instead, we have very high levels of anxiety, depression, and violence.  A narrative that brought outward blessings to a nation (wealth, power, prestige) has not seemed to bring inner blessings (peace, contentment, confidence, love, hope, faith).  The narrative of finding blessing and alleviating suffering through more money and more stuff with each generation is a well intentioned narrative, but it is a failed narrative. 

As disciples of Jesus, fishing for people, we have a different narrative to offer, a narrative counter to the narrative of American blessing.  Our narrative tells us that we are blessed not by or because of wealth, power, or prestige, but we are blessed because of covenant faithfulness to Jesus.  We are blessed by a life in which we seek first and foremost to love God and to love others.  We are blessed by a life in which we seek to partner with God in bringing about greater love, peace, justice, and hope in the world.  The signs of our blessing are not wealth, power, and prestige, nor a life without struggle.  Rather, the signs of our blessing are peace, contentment, confidence, love, hope, and faith even amidst the same struggles that all people have. 

As disciples of Jesus, we don’t believe we make our children’s lives better than ours by providing them with more money or things than we had growing up.  As disciples of Jesus, we believe we make our children’s lives better than ours (or possibly just as good as ours) by providing them with love and faith, with rhythm and relationship, with deep roots in God and each other.

In a society and culture continually speeding up, we slow down.  In a society and culture that is increasingly loud and full of distractions, we grow quiet and centered.  We slow down and grow quiet and centered because so little of the speed, noise, and distraction lead us to live lives in which we bring about greater love, peace, justice, and hope in the world.  So little of the speed, noise, and distraction help us to live intentional lives in which we love God and love people. 

That’s our net, or at least a large part of our net.  As disciples of Jesus, we have and live lives of love, hope, faith, peace, confidence, contentment.  We live the story that covenant faithfulness to God is its own blessing and it does not necessarily bring wealth, power, or prestige.  Rather, covenant faithfulness to God brings blessings of peace amidst suffering, contentment without great wealth, and confidence of eternal life in God even in death.  That’s our teaching and preaching that we, as disciples of Jesus, get to go out and give to others and live.  Amen.

"I Can Work With That." - God

Brad Sullivan

1 Epiphany, Year A (Baptism of Our Lord)

Sunday, January 12, 2014

St. Mark’s, Bay City, TX

Isaiah 42:1-9

Psalm 29

Acts 10:34-43

Matthew 3:13-17 

Today we’re celebrating the baptism of Jesus, hearing Matthew’s version of Jesus’ baptism by John in the River Jordan.  Years ago, I had a conversation about this very passage with a group of pastors, and while we started talking about why Jesus was baptized and what happens when we are baptized, the conversation quickly digressed into a talk about river baptism vs. font baptism vs. baptistery (the big immersion pool) baptism.  They even went into saying, “it never said Jesus was submerged, it said he emerged from the water.”  Do you sprinkle some water or do you poor?  This was a serious conversation, not about Jesus or what God does for us in baptism, just how do you get the ritual right, and each pastor more or less declaring themselves to be right.

One of the pastors actually said it doesn’t really matter how you baptize, what is important is what God does.  There was the tiniest little pause after his comment, and then the group went back to talking about immersion vs. pouring vs. sprinkling.  I was going nuts, and while on the one hand all I could really thing throughout the conversation was, “oh God, who cares?”, the conversation did speak of our need for ritual.  We need some way of marking our desire and goal of becoming a new person.  When we repent and turn our lives around (which can just about happen daily), we tend to need some way to mark that.  As physical people, we need physical action. 

So we take this ritual bath in baptism.  Now, baptism in the church only happens once.  We don’t get baptized over and over because we believe God is true to his word.  In baptism, we are welcomed into the Body of Christ, and we believe we need never be baptized again because God has already welcomed us and God will keep his promise to us.

Now some folks may want to take another ritual bath.  Maybe they don’t remember their baptism, or maybe they simply want to repent again since their baptism and want again a physical way of cleansing.  Well, while we won’t rebaptize in the church (thereby declaring God’s original promise broken), I say if you want another ritual bath, take one.  After some repentance and some soul searching, take a bath.  Renew your baptismal promises and vows when you take a bath, or when you take a shower, or jump in a pool or a lake or the ocean.  You can renew your baptismal promises and take some kind of ritual bath anytime you want, not because God needs you to, but because sometimes we need some ritual in our lives to remind and to renew.  We’re going to be renewing our baptism covenant once I’m done speaking so that we as a people can be reminded of and renew the promises we made and be reformed again as God’s people. 

So that’s a bit about what we do in baptism, but what does God do?  God sees a heart that is longing for connection with him.  God sees a heart that is longing to live a life of love, faith, and hope, and then God sees a wonderfully messed up person, fully of imperfections emerging from the waters of Baptism, and God says, “I can work with that.”  God says, “you are flawed and scared, and deeply messed up, and I am going to grant you my Holy Spirit, make you one with me and walk with you, and use who you are and what you have to partner with me as a people to live out my love in the world.  I will make you part of the Body of Christ,” God says, “and I will walk with you always.”

So why was Jesus baptized?  Jesus was already one with God, already living out God’s love in the world.  He didn’t become part of the Body of Christ; he was the Body of Christ.  So what was going on?  Partly I believe this was revelation as God’s Holy Spirit came down and lighted on Jesus, and the voice from heaven declared Jesus to be God’s beloved son.  Partly I believe Jesus was baptized in order to be in this with us.  He was calling us to be God’s faithful people, and part of being God’s faithful people in the first century was to take the ritual cleansing bath of Baptism.  This ritual bath was a way that Jews repented in order to be reformed as God’s people.  Without baptism, Jesus would have been declaring himself other than that people.  Jesus did not declare himself other than us.  Jesus was a part of Israel, standing squarely with those who knew they needed repentance, knew they were not perfect, and sought help from God to live as God’s faithful servant.

When we are baptized, Jesus is standing squarely with us to, not because we are perfect, but because we are beloved and because we said yes to God’s call to repent and be reformed as God’s people.  In baptism God forms us as part of the Body of Christ.  We become part of the servant described in Isaiah 42.  In Isaiah 42, God was talking about the people of Israel as his servant.  In the Isaiah passage, we hear God referring to his people Israel:

He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.  He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching.

That is who and what we are baptized into when we are baptized into the Body of Christ.  Jesus is Faithful Israel lived out in one man.  When we are baptized into Jesus’ body, we are formed as faithful Israel, called to partner with God to bring peace and justice to the world.  We’re called to do, to be, to live as love incarnate in the world.

We are not called to be perfect.  While we do repent and try to turn our lives around, we don’t rid ourselves of all our imperfections.  Obviously, none of us have been made perfect in baptism.  God doesn’t need us to be.  God just wants us to say yes.  God then takes us, scars and all and says, “I can work with that,” and then God asks us to become love.  We still have our imperfections.  God doesn’t eradicate them.  God redeems them.  God uses the mess of our lives to help heal others and reach out to folks who couldn’t be reached by someone without some imperfections.  We often relate to each other in our messiness and our brokenness.  So God takes what we’ve got and works with it, redeems it, and uses us, partners with us in loving and healing the world he created.

When we baptize, we tell God we want to be a part of his people.  We say, God, I’m a mess, see what you can do with it, and Jesus stands squarely with us, being baptized with us, standing squarely on the side of broken messed up people, and decaring them his.  “Y’all want to be my servant, God says, part of my son’s body.  Y’all are broken and messed up, but I can work with that.”   Amen.

Yeah, I've Heard That Story Before...

Brad Sullivan

2 Christmas, Year A

Sunday, January 5, 2014

St. Mark’s, Bay City, TX

Jeremiah 31:7-14
Psalm 84
Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a
Matthew 2:13-15,19-23

Last week, I watched two movies, a horror/thriller named “The Purge” and a sci-fi/action movie called Elysium.  They were basically the same movie.  A rather dystopian future, the haves vs. the have-nots, things going pretty well for the haves until the struggles of the have-nots spilled over into the lives of the haves.  In one of the movies, this story was told as a horror story.  In the other movie, this story was told as a sci-fi movie.  The plots were different, but the story was the same.

Now, as a horror movie, “The Purge” was like a lot of movies I’ve seen before, and I turned to Kristin at one point and said, “yeah, kinda bored now because I really like the premise, but at this point, I’ve seen this movie before; it’s like several other horror movies and thrillers that I’ve seen.”  We kept watching, though, and by the end, I realized that this other story, the story of the haves vs. the have-nots was really the story that was being told.  So, I enjoyed it and it was nice to see the story told in a different way.  Same with the Sci-fi movie, “Elysium”, as a sci-fi movie, I had seen it before, but it was a different way of seeing the overarching story of the struggle between the haves and the have-nots.

There are stories that are told and re-told over and over again, and it the stories are well told, we seem not to tire of them.  Most of the movies we see, we’ve seen before with different actors, a different plot, different script, and a different name, but the basic stories, we’ve seen and heard over and over again.  How many romantic comedies do we have to see to know the story?  A couple meets, they fall in love, they fight, and then they get back together in the end. 

Exposition, conflict, climax, resolution…creation, fall, judgment, redemption, re-creation:  this is the very basic story we see and hear in almost every story we see and hear, and we pretty much don’t tire of it.  That’s because God wrote this story into the very fabric of the world:  creation, fall, judgment, redemption, re-creation.  I guess we pretty well authored the “fall” part of the story, but then God took what we wrote and used it to end the story with redemption and re-creation.  This is the story of our lives, the story of the Gospel, God taking our stories and redeeming them into his Gospel story. 

In Matthew’s telling of the story of Jesus’ life, we see Jesus’ life mirroring somewhat the story of the creation of Israel.  Jesus started in Israel, the land of promise, then went to Egypt, and then made his way back to Israel.  This was the story of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and his sons who fled to Egypt during the famine, became a numerous people, and then journeyed back to Canaan, the land of promise, to become the nation of Israel.  Israel went through the waters of the Red Sea and then spent 40 years in the wilderness becoming faithful servants of God.  Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River and then spent 40 days in the wilderness being tempted by Satan, being strengthened to remain and fully become (in his humanity) the faithful servant of God that he was.

Matthew told the story of Jesus’ life through the lens of scripture, constantly quoting scripture and showing how Jesus’ life fulfilled scripture.  Have you known folks who can quote scripture?  Often people do this to teach or tell others how life is or how they should be.  There’s no Bible to thump, so they thump other people with their knowledge of scripture.  Sometimes folks quote scripture, however, because scripture has become the lens through which they view their lives.  The stories of scripture are our stories and they make sense of our lives.  Like Matthew telling the story of Jesus, our lives tend to make sense when we narrate them through the stories of scripture.  You don’t have to be able to quote scripture in order to do this.  Even if you can’t quote it, the story, the Gospel story over and over again, is your story, woven into your very being. 

Jesus is the story of all creation told in one human’s life.  Jesus is the Gospel story.  Most of us have heard this story over and over again, and we tend not to tire of it because Jesus is God’s story, woven into the fabric of creation, told and re-told over and over again throughout our history.  Jesus’ story is the story of our lives, woven into us even as we were being formed in the womb. 

Now, have you ever heard a story that ends prematurely?  Creation, and no fall.  Fall and no judgment.  Judgment without restoration and re-creation.  We tend not to like these stories as much.  Stories that end early leave part of the narrative of creation out of them.  They aren’t full stories.  We hate hearing or telling these partial, incomplete stories, and yet often, sadly, people live out these incomplete narratives. 

Imagine the prodigal son choosing not to go back to his father, too proud to turn around and admit he was wrong, or imagine that once he did go back, he simply told his dad he wanted more money, skipping redemption and re-creation and going straight back to fall.  That would make a lousy story, and yet it is the kind of story many people choose to live.  

Sometimes we don’t let this incomplete narrative be the story of our entire lives, but just the story of some relationships in our lives or just the story of some poor decisions in our lives.  Our pride, our arrogance, our fear, our hurt, etc. keeps us holding on to the one part of the narrative we can pretty well author for ourselves…the fall.  Now the fall may be terrible, we may be miserable and hate it, but it’s ours.  We wrote it.  We can keep writing it, and no one, by God, can take it away from us. 

Well, Jesus didn’t come here to take our hurts away from us.  Jesus didn’t come here to take our broken relationships and poor decisions away from us.  Jesus came here to redeem our hurts, to redeem our broken relationships and poor decisions.  Jesus came here to finish the story woven into the fabric of creation and to help us to finish our stories. 

Sometimes that means we’re going to have to take a journey.  If we’re going to allow God to finish our stories with the story of the Gospel, with redemption and re-creation, then we might first have to go to Egypt and make the long slow journey back.  Imagine if Israel had not spent 40 years in the wilderness becoming faithful and obedient to God, if God had said, “yeah, y’all are not really faithful to me at all, but go on in, have the promised land.”  That would have been a terrible story because they would not have been the light to the nations that God formed them to be.  The story would not have been complete.  Imagine if Joseph had not trusted in God to journey to Egypt with an infant / toddler.  That was likely no simple journey and relocation, and Joseph could have decided that he had just about had it with God’s interference in his life and that he was going to stay right where he was.  That probably wouldn’t have made for a very good story once Herod showed up. 

Living out the Gospel story in our lives and allowing God to redeem our stories means we may have to travel far out of our comfort in what we do.  Reconciling past hurts with people is no easy task, but then again, staying angry or hurt makes for a terrible story because it’s not the story of the Gospel.  Having a desire to serve other people, noticing the needs around us, is no easy task, like Joseph fleeing to Egypt, but then again, having a desire and an ability to help others and choosing not to makes for a terrible story because it’s not the story of the Gospel. 

Whatever is on your heart right now, service, or forgiveness, or a need for healing or to be healed, allow God to finish your story.  You know the basics of the narrative, you know where your story is leading…redemption and re-creation.  Now, you may have a long slog before you get there.  You may have to go to Egypt before coming back to the promised land, but trust in God on that journey.  Trust that Jesus has already made that journey, that he has lived and told your story, your basic story, because it is the story of the Gospel, woven into the fabric of creation.  Amen.