January 27, 2008 Des Moines
Matthew 4:12-23
Ministry by Running Away
Eccentric. Who do you know who is “eccentric”? Perhaps it is that crazy uncle who only comes
around a couple of times a year, around whom everyone just shakes their head
and rolls their eyes. Maybe it is that
annoying activist in the community who just always wears you out. Typically, that word isn't a real
compliment. Eccentric. But describing her point of view regarding
the subjects in her book titled Glorious Eccentrics: Modernist Women Painting and Writing,
author Mary Ann Caws clarifies that, for her, the term 'eccentric' is a
positive description, rather than a pejorative one. It derives, she writes, from “the literal
dictionary sense of the word, that is, ex-centric: deviating from the center or the
norm. It suggests a behavior
inappropriate to the context of one's life or situation, to the specific social
circumstance, a way of life or love or work deliberately chosen instead of
given.” In writing, then, about her
particular subjects, what she finds most appealing are those particular
intersections that push one out of the mainstream -- “the crucial moments of
their lives or thoughts, those crisis points that mold the mind and heart and
grip the imagination.” [1]
Crisis points that mold the mind and
heart and grip the imagination – and in so molding and gripping, move one into
a decisive new direction. We know how
that can be. Life is going along in its
routine, with few enough bumps in the road.
Sometimes you even start to coast a little. And then something happens.
Maybe it is a health scare – a heart attack, perhaps; maybe it is a life
explosion – your spouse suddenly leaving; maybe it is a professional jolt –
like the loss of a job or a corporate decision you realize you simply cannot
live with. But whatever it is, life
becomes redefined, in a way, as before and after. The flabby becomes fit. The negligent and lazy becomes a crusader. The aloof becomes hyper-attentive. The mean becomes affectionately tender.
The crises are as personal as the
transformations that follow them. What
breaks one galvanizes another; what stirs one demoralizes the next; what turns
one dead-ends someone else; what lights up the sky like fireworks for one is
dismissed by another with a yawn and a blink.
But for those who experience the explosion, life on this side suddenly
bears little resemblance to life back there.
Whether or not anything else has changed, you have changed
in a fundamental way that makes all the difference in the world. To use again that description, the crisis has
led you to leave the main road and make your own. Those who knew you before look and notice
something...eccentric.
“Powerfully, even gloriously
eccentric,” you might say. It is an
unorthodox way of thinking about Jesus, but reading the story of the morning
the description seems to fit. No one,
after all, would accuse Jesus of being a centrist, or mainstream, and this
story seems to root the deviation.
It's hard to know exactly how much
of a crisis John's arrest represented to Jesus, but it clearly got his
attention. And while the word “fear”
never appears in Matthew's account, it's hard to deny that it was a
factor. According to the story, when
Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he decided that a change of address
was in order.
That sounds like fear to me. You may hear that a different way, but what I
make of it is that Jesus was afraid for his own life, and so ran away. Now maybe by modern measurements the distance
between Nazareth and Capernaum doesn't seem that significant – 20 to 30
miles. The distance between Ames and Des
Moines. But on foot the relocation takes
on larger significance. And we
understand different jurisdictions. In
days before telephones and the Internet, a move to the next county was
generally all it took to put oneself out of the reach of those governmental
officials who might have taken an interest in you.
And so fearing for his life, Jesus
moved. But once there, it appears that
something happened – inside, this time.
Maybe what had started out as fear began to smolder with a little
distance. And maybe in those coals of
the heart was forged a steely resolve that could not abide sitting still or
hiding out or any longer simply “taking it.”
And so Jesus stepped out; began to touch and to heal and to preach – to
preach, in fact, with the same words as had gotten John into trouble: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come
near.”
Now that kind of language has been
sanitized to our way of hearing – it raises scarcely an eyebrow, except perhaps
for its pious sound and off-putting grandiosity. But for people in Jesus' day – where another
very real kingdom was already center stage – such talk of a rival one would
have sounded quite daring, indeed.
Treasonous, in fact, depending on the listener. And if the word “repent” has less to do with
sorrow and contrition over one's sins as we tend to think understand it, and
more to do with “turning in a new direction” -- going beyond the mind that you
have and thinking and seeing in a whole new way [2] --
then one can be forgiven for drawing fairly radical and decisive conclusions
about what Jesus was calling for. Having
himself undergone a powerful change, Jesus – far from lobbing sweet little
platitudes to help the restless sleep -- was asking nothing less of those to
whom he preaching and taught and reached.
And as we begin to hear his words in
fresh ways, it's not like we have any trouble identifying parts of our own
“kingdom” decidedly in conflict with the kingdom God has in mind. Any society, like our own...
l
that elevates possession over relation;
l
that self-righteously sacrifices common good on the altar of
personal privilege and private gain;
l
that blithely and blindly ignores the vulnerabilities of
tomorrow in favor of the indulgence of today;
l
that celebrates consumption and excess and greed as the
lifestyle to envy while relegating commitment and compassion and conservation
to the quaint but disposable recourse of the weak and unenlightened...
...bears no resemblance
to the kind of Kingdom of God to which Jesus called attention.
The kingdom in charge of Jesus' day
was marked by imprisonment, domination, order, and elite – a realm from which
we, despite all the years that separate us, have hardly deviated. Our toys are more sophisticated; lives enjoy
considerably greater ease, but little fundamental has changed.
So it was that in running away,
Jesus serendipitously found his way into ministry – one devoted to encouraging
in the people who would listen different eyes and ears and imaginations and
hearts; ministry in service to different values and priorities and allegiances
and hopes. And he wasn't just asking
people to think about it; to dream about it and think lofty thoughts. He was asking people to do something about
it.
And some did. According to the story Jesus was not the only
one to run away to ministry. Peter and
Andrew and James and John caught from Jesus a sense of something irresistible
and dropped what they were doing and followed.
Leaving behind the shape and character of life as they had always known
it, they turned in a new direction – they repented as we have already defined
the word – and started life on radically different terms. Saying, in effect, “no more”, they became
active participants in the construction of “what next?”
As, of course, could we. It wouldn't be easy. And every change carries risk. New territories are by definition unfamiliar,
meaning we don't know yet where the potholes are. We are generally “risk averse” and so we
routinely travel familiar patterns even when they are unattractive and
uneventful and unfulfilling.
But then that only keeps us dully,
drably, numbingly safe – but not alive.
If doing the same old thing while expecting different results is the
definition of insanity, then experiencing a different life will mean living
life differently. It may, indeed, make
us eccentric, but isn't that better than being insane?
Years ago, the church I served hid
an oddity beneath the pulpit. In the
floor, just beyond where the preacher's foot might comfortably stand, was a
button that revealed itself as only the slightest bump in the carpet that
concealed it. It controlled the
spotlights in the ceiling that specially illuminated that area of the
chancel. I'll never forget the time a
guest minister, preaching one evening during what an earlier generation might
have called a “revival,” was well into the thick of his sermon when his
animated movements carried his feet unawares into the depths of that pulpit. Spotlights suddenly erupting in the midst of
the dim sanctuary stole the words from his mouth and any thought from his
concentration. In that nano-second of confusion it startled him – partly
because he didn't know what had happened, nor how, and partly because he didn't
know but what the whole building was about to explode. An awkward pause ensued while he tried to
regain his bearings and mentally inventory every available exit should one
prove necessary. Meanwhile, the
congregation began to knowingly chuckle, and once he comprehended that it was
only light, the preacher did too.
It had scared him, but the fright
turned out to be stumbled-into light.
Running away into ministry is like that:
“the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for
those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.” Everything changes, but what we stumble into
is light.
"Change your life,” Jesus urged people after he had fearfully, illuminatingly
changed his own. “God's kingdom is
here."