The Catch of the Day: Repentance (Sermon)

"The Catch of the Day: Repentance

Mark 1:14-20

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

1/24/21

 

¹⁴Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, ¹⁵and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

¹⁶As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. ¹⁷And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” ¹⁸And immediately they left their nets and followed him. ¹⁹As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. ²⁰Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.  (NRSV)

 

 

         Jesus’ cousin, John, has been arrested after calling out Herod for marrying his sister-in-law. And for having the prophetic courage to question a political leader’s ethical conduct, John gets thrown into prison. He will die there—beheaded by Herod. And yet, as this dark and violent chapter of John’s story begins, Jesus declares to all who will listen, “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

         This should not surprise us. Creating new beginnings out of chaos and death is God’s forte. God did it at the very beginning, when “the earth was a formless void.” God did it with an aged and barren Sarah; and again when Jacob deceived Isaac and Esau; and again when the Hebrews fell into slavery in Egypt; and again when the inept King Saul almost destroyed Israel; and again when Israel was taken into captivity by Babylon—twice. And when Mark reminds his readers of John’s arrest and execution, he’s foreshadowing the most remarkable of new beginnings, the one created between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

         We can’t know for certain that Jesus actually knew, at that moment, how his own life would unfold, but he knew the scriptures well. He knew Israel’s story. So, he could, in good faith, proclaim that God was already responding to John’s suffering in a way that would redeem all the injustice and all the grief that so many Jews were experiencing under the thumbs of Caesar and Herod.

Jesus also sensed that God had called him to awaken people to a brand-new spiritual life, to an awareness that recognizes, welcomes, and even inhabits the new thing God is always in the midst of doing. Jesus calls that new thing The Kingdom of God.

         Mark suggests that Jesus puts all of this together not only in the aftermath of John’s arrest, but in the bright light of Jesus’ own baptism and through the defining experience of his temptation in the wilderness. Mark takes a total of five verses to narrate both of those watershed events. And immediately (that seems to be Mark’s favorite word), Jesus begins to preach the kingdom and to call his first disciples.

         Along the shores of the Sea of Galilee Jesus invites two sets of brothers, all of them fishermen, to follow him. Now, the NRSV translates the last part of verse 17 to read “and I will make you fish for people.” Commentator Ted Smith thinks that the NRSV’s action-oriented language obscures something crucial about Jesus’ call. Smith says that a more accurate translation would read, like the old King James, “and I will make you fishers of [people].” Ted Smith says that using the noun “fishers” makes Jesus’ call not just about performing an act, but about engaging a new and very specific identity.¹

         That distinction makes sense to me. I remember talking about fishing with the principal of the middle school in which I taught for four years. Dr. Freeland, an avid hunter and fisherman, said that it wasn’t uncommon to watch two people fishing the very same water, maybe even out of the same boat, and to notice that one of them was catching fish and the other was watching it happen. The differences would be subtle—the depth of the line into the water, the distance between the lead weight and the hook, the size of the hook, how long one waited before repositioning the line. Fish are not particularly smart creatures, but they are creatures of habit, and a real fisherman pays attention to the habits of fish, to the habits of water, to the weather, to the seasons, to his or her own state of mind while fishing. To “go fishing,” then, is to do more than chuck bait and wait on a bite. It is to enter and interact with the world. For fishermen who fish to eat and survive, fishing is an existential practice. Out of gratitude and necessity, they strike a holy balance between life and death.

         Jesus doesn’t call Simon, Andrew, James, and John because he wants them to fish, but because they are fishermen. And he will make of them a new kind of fisherman. They’ll understand their fishers of people work as a brand-new vocation, as an identity that rises out of a new way of living, moving, and having human beingin, with, and for the world. 

         Jesus also points out an essential step to take when moving beyond fishing to become fishers of people. Entering that new vocation requires repentance. It seems to me that over the centuries, the Church has so drastically narrowed the concept of repentance that the word has lost its mystery and power. I think most of us approach repentance like people who are merely fishing rather than like people who are fishermen. The biblical and spiritual concept of repentance is more than acknowledging and feeling guilt for one’s sins. Repentance means allowing God’s Spirit to turn us in an entirely new direction.

Sure, in repentance we take responsibility for actions that have hurt others or ourselves, but full repentance also means taking stock of one’s surroundings, one’s priorities, fears, desires, prejudices, and commitments. People who live according to the ways of repentance read their own lives the way fishermen read the water. They search their own souls for places of fullness and emptiness; and then, turning from the emptiness, turning from the selfishness, they cast the nets of their love where they will gather the most nourishment for themselves and for others. For fishers of people, repentance is the catch of the day.

         When looking for disciples, Jesus looks for people who will understand repentance. He looks for people who will trust what their eyes don’t necessarily see; people who trust the truth and the wholeness they feel in the depths of their hearts; people who trust the Creator of sky, and wind, and soil, and water, and fish; people who can own their failures and forgive themselves and others.

The ways and means of true fishermen are good training for followers. So, to Simon, Andrew, James, and John, Jesus says, “Follow me,” and I will up your game. I will make you fishers of human beings. I will teach you to read waters you don’t even see yet. I will lead you in lives of repentance, lives in which, together, we will offer nourishment, strength, and reconciling grace to all humankind.

         I’m going to close this sermon with a song. I’ve sung it to you before, but it’s relevant every time we read this text. I hope illustrates the kind of struggle that disciples experience when hearing Jesus’ call, when learning to trust him and to follow him, and when learning to live a life of repentance.

Taking Up a New Life

w/m by Allen Huff

© 2020

 

Andy and me been fishing that water since we were eight years old.

Daddy had us up and out every morning in the dark, and rain, and cold.

For twenty years we lived our days on that same sandy shore.

And every day and every fish looked like the one before.

 

I was hungry for adventure, for somewhere else to be,

So when that stranger came to town, and he said, Follow me,

I felt a wind blow through my hair and a shiver down my spine.

Storm’s a-coming, Andy said beneath that sunny sky.

 

Well, that very day, my brother and me signed on.

We didn’t know just what to expect, but it wasn’t kingdom come.

We left the nets right where they lay, and the boat beached high and dry.

In disbelief our daddy said we’d left him there to die.

 

But something died in me, as well, when that rabbi showed his face.

He cast his nets all over me, and pulled me from the lake,

And I realized just how much I did not want to change.

To follow him my life would be forever rearranged.

 

Chorus:

Taking up a new life and laying down the old,

Never happens all at once ‘cause the end is not the goal.

All we saw, and said, and did, like compost in the earth,

Feeds the future with the past making way for new birth.

 

Fishing had been my life and work, a vocation good and fair.

But Jesus saw much more in me than I had ever dared.

He read the waters of my soul like I could read the lake,

And he said, Fish for people from now on, and Rock will be your name.

 

Faithful to a fault to what I thought I knew was real.

I rolled a stone across my mind and made certainty the seal.

When I told him he was wrong, he looked me in the eye

And said, Bless your heart, you clueless fool; me you will deny!

 

 

Bridge:

Well, a rock and a millstone are just the same if to one you are bound,

So to teach me to swim, that rabbi let me drown.

Now gold and silver have I none, and neither do I need.

To know where I’ve been and who I am shines light on what can be.

 

Chorus

 

¹Ted A. Smith, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 1. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors. Westminster John Knox Press, 2008. p. 289.

We May and We Must (Sermon)

"We May and We Must"

1Samuel 3:1-20

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

1/17/21

 

Ancient Hebrew priests like Eli had a very specific role in the life of Israel. As arbiters between the community and God, they called the people to faithfulness in living and to repentance when they went astray. And God expected priests to lead by example, to model both faithfulness and repentance.

In 1Samuel 2 we learn that Eli’s sons, Hophni and Phinehas, who were priests by birthright, were “scoundrels.” They stole the best food brought in for sacrifices. They seduced the young women who welcomed worshipers at the tent of meeting. To make matters worse, Eli did nothing to stop them.

         In chapter 2, we also learn of a kind of vision that Eli had. A “man of God” comes to the aging priest and says that when the Hebrews were slaves in Egypt, God chose an ancestor of Eli’s to serve as priest. So, Eli’s priestly lineage had the authority of both God’s anointing and long-standing tradition. In light of Eli’s failures, though, God was about to break that tradition. Eli and his household were going to fall, and God would raise up a new priest: A “trustworthy prophet of the Lord.” 

 

Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. ²At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; ³the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was.

⁴Then the Lord called, “Samuel! Samuel!” and he said, “Here I am!” ⁵and ran to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call; lie down again.” So he went and lay down.

⁶The Lord called again, “Samuel!” Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call, my son; lie down again.”

⁷Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. ⁸The Lord called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.”

Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. ⁹Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’”

So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

¹⁰Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

¹¹Then the Lord said to Samuel, “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle. ¹²On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. ¹³For I have told him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. ¹⁴Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering forever.”

¹⁵Samuel lay there until morning; then he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. ¹⁶But Eli called Samuel and said, “Samuel, my son.” He said, “Here I am.”

¹⁷Eli said, “What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also, if you hide anything from me of all that he told you.”

¹⁸So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. Then he said, “It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him.”

¹⁹As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. ²⁰And all Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the Lord. (1Samuel 3:1-20 - NRSV)

 

         The story opens in a barren season. God’s word and guiding visions are rare. In the midst of that spiritual winter, a boy encounters God in a word-saturated vision. In his innocence and inexperience, the boy mistakes the voice calling him for Eli’s voice. Eli may have failed in many ways, but the storyteller says that “the light of God had not yet gone out.” The reference may be to an actual lamp in the sanctuary, but it also alludes to the old priest’s spiritual awareness. As far as Eli has fallen, he does, finally, recognize that God is calling Samuel.

Next time you hear the voice, says Eli, tell God that you’re listening. Samuel listens, and he receives the ear-tingling news of Eli’s downfall. Already aware of the judgement against his household, Eli says, Let God do what God will do.

That Samuel doesn’t yet “know the Lord” through all of this tells us that God is taking fresh initiative. Following the failure of Eli and his sons, God is calling a new priestly line to lead Israel.

In Israel, a priest was a pastoral theologian. He was called by God to perform sacrifices and to teach the Torah. He was also a practical theologian. He was called to lead the people in applying the Law in their lives. He was also called to speak prophetic truth to the people, regardless of its popularity. And in Israel, crises often became the most critical times to hold the community accountable to the demanding truths of the first commandment—“You shall have no other gods before me”—and the Shema—"Hear O Israel, the Lord [alone] is our God…love the Lord…with all your heart…soul [and] might.” Teach all of this to your children, and make it part of your everyday lives. (Deuteronomy 5:7 and 6:4-9)

Those truths served as the bedrock of Israel’s spiritual, ethical, moral, political, and social existence in the ­“real” world. Belonging to God and to God alone, everything they did was tied to their blessed-to-be-a-blessing call from God.

For Eli, then, was it imperative that he call his sons as well the community to faithfulness. In failing to do that, Eli failed to honor the first commandment and the Shema. His silence threatened to undermine all of Israel and her role as a redeeming presence in and hopeful blessing to the wider world.

As with ancient Israel, our Christian spirituality and witness cannot be limited to holding church services and doing altruistic things with time, talents, and tithes. Faithfulness to God includes our interactions with the world beyond the Church. And God calls us to mirror the ways and means of Jesus, who lived a life of radical commitment to God, and who called Jew and Gentile alike to lives of shared experience, shared responsibility, shared wealth, shared suffering, and shared joy.

I’ve heard it suggested that pastors cannot rightfully express viewpoints addressing the wider community’s struggles. I understand that concern. Someone with the authority of the pulpit must tread carefully; and certainly, the pulpit should never be used as a something partisan. Then again, while someone may have the right to say that others don’t have the right to speak, the biblical story doesn’t let pastors or the faith community off that easy. God’s Holy Spirit creates and calls a prophetic community.

The story of Eli and his sons demonstrates that there are times when silence is complicity in actions that are destructive to community and, therefore, fundamentally antithetical to God. The gospel also demonstrates that there are times when Christians and Christian communities have not only the right but the responsibility to claim their Christ-voice and speak to issues of justice, equality, and peace in the wider world.

In the Theological Declaration of Barmen, pastors and religious scholars did just that: They raised their prophetic voice and challenged Nazi attempts to co-opt, corrupt, and even silence the Church’s message and make it compatible with a fascist agenda. The writers of Barmen declared that their “imperiled” church was “threatened by the teaching methods and actions…of the ‘German Christians’”—(the state church of the Third Reich). Those methods and actions undermined the theological foundations and the unified witness of the body of Christ. And when that is allowed to happen, says Barmen, “the Church ceases to be the Church.”²

At great risk to themselves, these priests and prophets declared, “we may and [we] must speak…since we…have been given a common message to utter in a time of common need and temptation.”³

Declaring that “Jesus Christ…is the one Word of God which we have to hear…trust and obey,” the writers of Barmen rejected “false doctrine, as though the church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides [Jesus], still other events and powers, figures and truths.”⁴

On January 6, 2021, at the US Capitol, fellow Christians raised the cross of Christ next to symbols of white supremacy, hate, and violence; but hate and violence have no place in Christ’s Church. Now, I do not think that everyone present that day was racist, hateful, and violent. It is clear, however, that that particular cross was raised not as a prophetic counterpoint to but as willful participation with those destructive forces. So, it is theological rather than political to say that, as followers of Jesus, we cannot, like Eli, remain silent in the face of such desecration.

In our own anxious days when holy words and guiding visions are all-too rare, God is calling our names. Like Samuel, let us say, “Here I am…Speak for your servant is listening.”

Whatever God says to us, “we may and [we] must” respond with a freely-offered, full-throated, prayer-actioned commitment to Jesus Christ, and to his ways of trustworthy prophecy—the ways of love, justice, and non-violent peace. For he and he alone is our way, our truth, and our life.

 

¹Lawrence Wood, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 1. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors. Westminster John Knox Press, 2008. p. 245.

^2-4For the text of the Theological Declaration of Barmen, see: https://www.creeds.net/reformed/barmen.htm

Shining Light into Darkness (Newsletter)

 Dear Friends,                                                            January 14, 2021

         These continue to be challenging anxious days. From pandemic to political unrest, we’re a people ill-at-ease with our neighbors and within our own skins. All around us, even within the body of Christ, cracks are turning into fissures. It seems that almost every conversation we have has the chance to devolve, if not into a full-blown argument, then into another moment when we feel compelled to take a side and be against someone or something else.

         As a pastor, I feel constantly tense and knotted up, and at the same time frayed and dis-integrated. What I most want is to bear witness to and to participate in God’s power to heal and make whole, at the same time I feel an urgency to claim the prophetic Christ-voice within me and speak truth to power—or maybe more specifically, into our culture’s addiction to violent power.

         In Luke 12, Jesus seems to have the same struggle going on. Early in the chapter, he tells his disciples not to worry about anything because if God takes care of “the birds of the air” and “the lilies of the field,” God will certainly take care of them. (Lk. 12:22-34) Then, a few verses later, he says that he has come not to bring peace but “division.” On his account, households will be divided against themselves. (Lk. 12:49-53)

         How do we make sense of such conflicting passages? Indeed, how do we make sense of such conflict? And how do we get through it intact? I wish I had an answer that would suit everyone, but not even Jesus had an answer like that. One path forward may be to look at our individual selves and our corporate self like we look at the gospel itself, as living stories, as metaphors, as works of art in which both shadow and light must be present for the beauty to be real and for it to fill us, move us, and transform us. That means we must acknowledge and engage both the shadow and the light.

A qualification becomes necessary: You have heard me say repeatedly that the Church, as the body of Christ, is a place in which all people are, and must be, welcome. And I do believe that. As I said to someone earlier this week, though, there is no room in the body of Christ for hate or for hate groups. To me, that is an absolute truth. As followers of Jesus, as people who claim to inhabit and reveal the kingdom of God, we are called to shine his light into the darkness of hate and fear, and to do so with confidence because, in the end, the darkness cannot overcome light of Christ. (John 1:5)

To begin shining light into darkness, we begin with ourselves. Through confession, we bathe our own souls and spirits with Christ’s light. We purge our own darkness before we can faithfully and effectively exercise a prophetic voice that calls others to the light of holiness, wholeness, and hope.

To that end, I offer a challenge to us all. In the coming week (or months if it helps), let’s begin and end our days with two psalms. Let’s awaken with the confession of Psalm 51, and close the day with the unsentimental affirmation of Psalm 27. In praying these two psalms, we recognize that there is darkness lurking within us, and we remember that God is our “light and [our] salvation.”

Where the darknesses of hate and fear threaten to consume us, let us remember that it cannot overcome God’s light. So, let us pray for one another. Let us pray for the peace of Jerusalem. And of Washington. And of Jonesborough. And of your community, wherever you are.

                                             Shalom,

                                                      Pastor Allen

 

¹Have mercy on me, O God,

according to your steadfast love;

according to your abundant mercy

blot out my transgressions.

²Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,

and cleanse me from my sin.

³For I know my transgressions,

and my sin is ever before me.

⁴Against you, you alone,

have I sinned,

and done what is evil in your sight,

so that you are justified in your sentence

and blameless when you pass judgment.

⁵Indeed, I was born guilty,

a sinner when my mother conceived me.

⁶You desire truth in the inward being;

therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.

⁷Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;

wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

⁸Let me hear joy and gladness;

let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.

⁹Hide your face from my sins,

and blot out all my iniquities.

¹⁰Create in me a clean heart, O God,

and put a new and right spirit within me.

¹¹Do not cast me away from your presence,

and do not take your holy spirit from me.

¹²Restore to me the joy of your salvation,

and sustain in me a willing spirit.

¹³Then I will teach transgressors your ways,

and sinners will return to you.

¹⁴Deliver me from bloodshed, O God,

O God of my salvation,

and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.

¹⁵O Lord, open my lips,

and my mouth will declare your praise.

¹⁶For you have no delight in sacrifice;

if I were to give a burnt offering,

you would not be pleased.

¹⁷The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;

a broken and contrite heart, O God,

you will not despise.

¹⁸Do good to Zion in your good pleasure;

rebuild the walls of Jerusalem,

¹⁹then you will delight in right sacrifices,

in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;

then bulls will be offered on your altar.

(Psalm 51 – NRSV)

 

 

¹The Lord is my light and my salvation;

whom shall I fear?

The Lord is the stronghold of my life;

of whom shall I be afraid?

²When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh—

my adversaries and foes—

they shall stumble and fall.

³Though an army encamp against me,

my heart shall not fear;

though war rise up against me,

yet I will be confident.

⁴One thing I asked of the Lord,

that will I seek after:

to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,

to behold the beauty of the Lord,

and to inquire in his temple.

⁵For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble;

he will conceal me under the cover of his tent;

he will set me high on a rock.

⁶Now my head is lifted up above my enemies all around me,

and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy;

I will sing and make melody to the Lord.

⁷Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud,

be gracious to me and answer me!

⁸“Come,” my heart says, “seek his face!”

Your face, Lord, do I seek.

⁹Do not hide your face from me.

Do not turn your servant away in anger,

you who have been my help.

Do not cast me off, do not forsake me,

O God of my salvation!

¹⁰If my father and mother forsake me,

the Lord will take me up.

¹¹Teach me your way, O Lord,

and lead me on a level path because of my enemies.

¹²Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries,

for false witnesses have risen against me,

and they are breathing out violence.

¹³I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

¹⁴Wait for the Lord; be strong,

and let your heart take courage;

wait for the Lord!

(Psalm 27 – NRSV)

A Demanding Redemption (Sermon)

 “A Demanding Redemption”

Isaiah 43:1-7  Matthew 2:1-12, 16-18 

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

Baptism of the Lord Sunday

1/13/13

 

Isaiah 43:1-7

But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. ²When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. ³For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you.

⁴Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life. ⁵Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; ⁶I will say to the north, “Give them up,” and to the south, “Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth—⁷everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” (NRSV)

 

Matthew 2:1-12, 16-18

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, ²asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.”

³When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; ⁴and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. ⁵They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: ⁶‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’”

⁷Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. ⁸Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.”

⁹When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. ¹⁰When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. ¹¹On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. ¹²And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

¹⁶When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. ¹⁷Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: ¹⁸“A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”(NRSV)

 

         When Yahweh says, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you,” let’s remember that this news comes to a people who are still in Babylon. Their outward reality doesn’t match the pronouncement of the prophet who says that God has alreadyredeemed the people.

         On top of that, not all Hebrews consider themselves captives. While some are ready to return to the land of their ancestors, plenty of Hebrews are ambivalent at best. At least three generations have been born in Babylon, and since Babylon has been a relatively tolerant captor, going to Jerusalem will be, for some Hebrews, leaving home, not returning home.

          I have to imagine that Isaiah's announcement, instead of drawing the people into hopeful celebration, throws them into turmoil because redemption can be a frightening thing. Indeed, when Yahweh says Don’t fear, many Israelites are terrified because deliverance from captivity means deliverance to a much more spacious and open-ended life.

         It reminds me of a character in the movie “The Shawshank Redemption.” An elderly inmate named Brooks learns that he has made parole, but after having spent his entire adult life in prison, prison life is the only life he knows. It’s the only life he can handle. So, when Brooks learns that he’s about to be released, he grabs a friend and threatens to murder him. Others talk him down, but for the old man, freedom looms as the ultimate prison. So, after his parole, Brooks, released but not really redeemed, checks into a halfway house and immediately hangs himself.

         I sometimes think that “traditional Christianity” is hanging itself. The customary affirmations proclaim that by God’s amazing grace, we’re being “freed from our sins.” But the church’s response to this good news, and very often its manner of sharing it, conveys more incarcerating fear than redeeming grace. Fearing rather than loving God, the church often mistakes doctrinal correctness for faith. And honestly, since Constantine, the church has been defined more by its association with political and military power than by Christlike generosity and justice. Desiring more in the way of comfort and security, many followers choose the life-diminishing safety of rigid dogma over the true freedom of servant-hearted discipleship.

         Now, doctrine is good insofar as it helps us to talk faithfully about God; but statements about God are not God. Making theological arguments about the Holy Spirit isn’t the same as the awareness of God’s breath stirring in our own breath. Writing a dissertation on the Incarnation isn’t the same as recognizing God’s face in the face of a stranger. We experience God’s life and liveliness most fully in the realm of silence, awe, and service.

         “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you,” says God. Babylon cannot hold you. Water cannot drown you. Fire cannot consume you. These statements ring hollow when we try to reduce them to dogmatic certainties. But Isaiah invites us into that spacious, feral, demanding homeland called redemption.

         Old Testament professor Kathleen O’Connor says that Isaiah’s words, “I have redeemed you,” hearken back to Leviticus 25: “If resident aliens among you prosper, and if any of your kin fall into difficulty with one of them and sell themselves to an alien…anyone of their family who is of their own flesh may redeem them.” (From Lev. 25:47-49)

         Redemption is the responsibility of family. Isaiah is making an extraordinary connection here. He says that in redeeming Israel, Yahweh, the Creator of the universe, claims them as family, as next-of-kin. To hear God lay claim to Israel as family prepares us for a similar scandal when God makes it even more specific, when God says to one person, Jesus of Nazareth, ‘YOU are my son.’

Jesus teaches us that the faithful response to God’s grace, is simply to live in the radical and redeeming freedom of God’s love, to live as ones not only blessed, but blessed to be blessings, and that means learning to let God’s love flow through us for the sake of others.

“Most of us,” says Richard Rohr, “were taught that God would love us if and when we change. [When in] fact, God loves [us] so that [we] can change. What empowers change, what makes [us] desirous of change, is the experience of love and acceptance itself.”

Not all acceptance is created equal. Herod welcomes the Magi, but his hospitality is self-serving. In fear, he opens his door to these aliens, but only to use them. He says he wants to worship the new king, when his desire is to destroy him. At great risk to themselves, the Magi defy Herod, who, being so terrified of losing power, sends his followers out to kill every male child two years old and under. Rich and powerful, Herod may have looked free, but his actions were those of someone enslaved to the lords of wealth and dominance.

         Right now, much of humankind, and certainly we in our nation, languish in what feels like Isaiah’s deep waters, storm-swollen rivers, and raging fires. And present anxieties have unsettled most of us. Doctrine and experience, however, tell me that God, as the Alpha and Omega, sees into a future of God’s own making. So, I do believe, more importantly I trust, that God sees that, come what may, Love wins. Love overcomes. Because love, and only love redeems.

So, wherever voices encourage resentment, division, and violence, followers of Jesus are to live as bold and defiant reminders of God’s redeeming grace. We are to speak a new language. And while Jesus calls us to challenge selfishness, greed, racism, sexism, indifference to suffering, our speech is not only the words we say but the ways we live. Jesus-followers live differently intentionally. Knowing that our hearts and lives belong to the one who has redeemed us, we hear but do not heed the voices that ignore justice, grasp for power, and demand violence.

Instead, we hear God say, “Bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth—everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory.” That is our call: To follow Jesus into the waters of baptism where everyone is redeemed and claimed as members of God’s family.

         It can be dangerous to defy the Herods of the world. So threatened are they by God’s grace and justice that, for their own benefit, they will act as if they are humble servants. They will deceive people of faith. And to preserve their power, they will commit unspeakable brutality against their own people. Isaiah reminds us, though, that come what may, we need not fear. The outcome of the struggle has been decided: By the grace of God, we have already been redeemed.

         Isaiah and Jesus challenge us to embrace and celebrate our God-given redemption. So, let us do so. Let us live joyfully and hopefully in the only true and lasting freedom—the freedom to love as we are loved, the freedom to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God, the freedom of the family of God.