“Galilee: The Nursery of Discipleship”
Matthew 28:1-10
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
Easter Sunday – April 16, 2017
It is dawn, on
the first day of a new week. Without saying it explicitly, the Easter story seems
to be singing: Fresh start! Do over! It
may be more accurate, however, to hear the gospel taking a deep breath and
saying: Here we go. Back to square one.
Think about it.
The disciples had enough trouble trying to follow Jesus in the first place. Now
the women are telling them that Jesus – whom they all abandoned, and who died a
criminal’s death – is alive. And that he still
wants them to follow him.
‘Galilee,’ the women said. ‘Jesus
will meet us in Galilee.’
Galilee,
remember, is where it all began. Galilee is where Jesus trolled the lakefront
for followers. Galilee is where Peter, Andrew, James, and John all abandoned
their fathers and their livelihoods for the sake of a rabbi with lots of charisma
but no resume. And now they are being called to return. Jesus calls them back to
Galilee because it’s time to start over, from a brand new square one.
It seems to me
that the challenging thing about both Incarnation and Resurrection is not that
they ask us to believe the implausible. On the whole, it’s easy enough to
choose to say “Yes” to both of those miracles and leave it at that – especially
if one has been taught to imagine God as more wrathful than grief-stricken at
the world’s suffering. But isn’t that just hedging bets?
We face the real challenge of faith
when we grow into the realization that Incarnation and Resurrection dare us to entrust our lives to something beyond
our comprehension. If the birth of Jesus reveals that the Creator chooses to be
made manifest in and through the material Creation, and if the resurrection of
Jesus reveals that God transcends and transforms human arrogance and violence, that
makes us participants in and witnesses to the mysteries of God’s creative and
re-creative Love. When we not only choose to believe, but intentionally pledge
ourselves to God’s provocative truth, our lives move in entirely new directions.
But what does that look like for us, here and now?
Our story says that we have to go
to Galilee to find out. Galilee becomes more than just the place where Jesus
called his first disciples. Galilee now represents the place where true discipleship
begins, and begins anew. It’s the launch pad into the unexplored territory of
ever-deepening discovery and trust. Galilee is the nursery of new discipleship.
In Matthew, it
was on a hill in Galilee that Jesus preached his ground-breaking Sermon on the
Mount. We spent time with the Beatitudes on the last Sunday of January this
year. And I made the point that these nine statements rise beyond commandments.
The Beatitudes describe a flow of spiritual growth that begins with poverty of
spirit. Each step builds on the previous step until, at the end, one can face
persecution with a sense of purpose. But facing that suffering places the
disciple right back at square one. It delivers us to a new poverty of spirit,
because regardless of the purpose, physical and emotional injury hurts.
Returning to the nursery of
newness, we begin the spiritual journey all over, again. And we soon discover
that our new journey demands more of us. But we’re ready for more. The new journey’s
increased intensity leads us to ever deepening maturity. Encountering some new
aspect of the image of God within us, we find ourselves able to share that
holiness more freely and to see it in others more clearly.
The humbling and exciting mystery
in all this is that the more our understanding of God expands, the more we see God
expanding beyond our understanding. That realization that God exceeds human
comprehension and categories often comes to us through some sort of painful,
Friday experience that sends us right back to the lakeshore in Galilee. And
there Jesus meets us, saying, Welcome
back. Now, follow me some more. And get ready. We’re going a little further
this time.
Corrie and Betsie Ten Boom were
sisters, Dutch Christians who went to Ravensbruck concentration camp during
World War II for hiding Jewish neighbors from the Nazis. Betsie would die in
the concentration camp, and Corrie would be released. Through a clerical error.
One week before all women her age were executed in gas chambers.1
In her book, The Hiding Place, Corrie describes the moment she saw one the
guards from Ravensbruck for the first time after the war.
“It was at a church service in
Munich that I saw him,” she says, “a former S.S. man who had stood guard at the
shower room door in the processing center…And suddenly it was all there – the
roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain-blanched face.
“He came up to me as the church was
emptying, beaming and bowing. ‘How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein…To
think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!’ His hand was thrust out to
shake mine. And I, who had preached so often…the need to forgive, kept my hand
at my side.
“Even as the angry, vengeful
thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for
this man; was I going to ask for more?…I tried to smile, I struggled to raise
my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or
charity. And so…I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I prayed, I cannot forgive him.
Give me Your forgiveness.
“As I took his hand,” says Corrie
Ten Boom, “the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm
and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my
heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me. And so I
discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that
the world’s healing hinges, but on [God’s]. When [God] tells us to love our
enemies, [God] gives, along with the command, the love itself.”
I pray
fervently that none of you ever experiences trauma as dramatic as Corrie Ten
Boom’s. But do you see how she survived persecution, only to find herself at a
place of brand new poverty of spirit? And in that church in Munich, she found
herself back in Galilee, facing a call to enter a brand new journey of discipleship.
At first that discipleship felt too deep and too challenging to enter.
Nonetheless, having learned to
follow, Corrie trusted and followed the risen Christ. She followed him into a most
unexpected moment of redemption, one that enriches us with an enduring witness
to the power of Resurrection to heal and make new.
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