Scripture readings: Jeremiah
1:4-10; Matthew 16:13-23
Before the end of that year I made a recommitment of
my life to Christ at a youth rally that our youth group went to. In the spring
of my nineteenth year our pastor had taken a call to another church, and I was
feeling the squeeze of God toward the ministry, that I had first felt when I
was twelve. I had thought that I had safely escaped from that calling.
While we were looking for a pastor, we got an interim
pastor (a temporary pastor) to help us hold steady during our search for a new
minister. And I should say that that search was never going to produce any
results.
Chet Marquis was our interim pastor, and I remember
the title and main illustration of one of his sermons: “Marching off the Map”.
The title actually came from a book by a Methodist preacher named Halford
Luccock.
The title and story come from the time of the Greek
conqueror, Alexander the Great. He accomplished one of the unthinkable feats of
the ancient world when he pulled together all the quarreling little countries
of the Greeks by conquest and intimidation.
Then he did the next unthinkable thing. He conquered
the unconquerable enemy of the Greeks; the vast Persian
Empire . The Persians ruled from the west coast of what is now Turkey , nearly to India .
Finally, in the mountains of Afghanistan ,
his generals banded together. They were afraid of where they were going, and
they were afraid to admit it. They came to Alexander and said, “We don’t know
what to do next. We have marched off the map.”
Our lesson is that this is what Christians are called
to do. This is what faith is about.
This is what our readings from Jeremiah and Matthew
tell us. Jeremiah was a child, or a teenager, who was confronted by God to take
on a task for which he had no preparation, and no understanding, and no
enthusiasm. In Matthew, Jesus was requiring his disciples, his church to stop
being trapped, and tricked, and defeated by the conventional wisdom of their
time and our time. Jesus gives the same requirement to us.
But it must be seen that, just as often as they
obeyed the rules of accountability and prudence, they also defied prudence, and
the conventional wisdom. They had to, by the example, and at the command, of
Jesus.
In Matthew, Jesus tried to open Peter’s eyes to his
greatest need and to his greatest problem. In a great surprise, Peter was able
to express his faith in a way that nobody had done before, and he was able to
do this because he listened to God. “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for
this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father
in heaven.” (Matthew 16:17)
In the presence of Jesus and the Father , Peter was able to say, “You are the Christ
(the Messiah) the Son of the Living God.” Peter was able to say this because,
for a moment, he heard God; and he even listened.
Then, just a moment later, Peter was thinking like
himself again. I mean that Peter was thinking like most other people again.
Jesus had to say, “Get behind me Satan…. You do not have in mind the things of
God, but the things of men.”
In my nineteenth year, I was reluctantly preparing to
think God’s way, and march off the map. Our church was also thinking about
marching off the map.
The experts and authorities (meaning the relevant
presbytery committee) mostly told me that I was making a big mistake, and that
I should stop. I didn’t have the people skills, or the temperament, for the
ministry; and I wasn’t broad minded enough.
The experts and authorities also came to our church.
They came to us in all their depth of practical experience, and conventional
wisdom, and prudence. They told our church in the gentlest, and the most
polite, and the most non-coercive way possible that it would be unlikely for us
to be able to find a pastor who would be willing to serve us, and it would be
so much wiser and simpler to stop. The
church listened to them.
They stopped. I didn’t.
I’m not saying that I marched well, or that I am
doing so now. I see myself with the same eyes I saw myself so many years ago.
I never dared to ask for proof that I was capable of
doing what God called me to do. I never dared to ask to have anything to show
for it. I only asked God to keep his promises, in his own way and time.
In Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians he wrote
of his own calling and his sense of weakness. When Paul confronted the Lord
with his weakness, the Lord said this to Paul: “My grace is sufficient for you,
for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:8)
When I was nineteen, I told God that he would have to
keep this promise to me. My current prayer is to have the same heart as I had
then.
I invite you to that same heart and promise.
In the presence of the Father
and the Son, the Holy Spirit gave Peter the essential faith that he needed. It
was a faith that does not come from prudence, or sense, or the conventional
wisdom.
Both prudence and craziness can defeat faith.
Prudence can turn faith into fearful and cautious self-destruction. Craziness
can turn it into insensitive, loveless self-destruction.
You must make sure to lovingly stay “in the presence”
of the living God and let your serving be shaped by the love of him, above
everything else. You must do all your living, and you must do all your serving,
as individual Christians, and in fellowship as a church, from the center of the
presence of the living God.
You must pray, and pray together, and worship, and
study, and listen. Listen! Don’t be afraid, and don’t devour yourself. Love God
and love each other relentlessly and with infinite patience.
His kingdom will have no borders. It will not grow
(alone) by people coming in, but by it going out.
It will not be comfortable. Nothing in the Bible
gives us that hope. The Bible tells us that we will all receive comfort, but
never that we will be comfortable. His kingdom is about loving God and loving a
hostile world, and caring enough about both God and the world to be crucified.
The world is changing, but the kingdom
of God , the kingdom of Jesus ,
does not change. At the same time we are wrong, most of the time, about how to
participate in the kingdom. We are wrong, most of the time, about how the
church works as part of the kingdom.
We have been wrong to think that the church and the
kingdom were about people coming here, to us, and taking our places when we got
old. The ancient maps had dragons painted along the edges to keep people from
daring to march off the edge. We have willingly inherited those dragons, or
painted dragons of our own along the edges of our map. We have more edges on our map to march off of
(in Washtucna, and Kahlotus, and Hopper, and Benge, and the whole neighborhood)
than we can possibly imagine.
Most of the time, the edges of the map are these
walls. It you want to be the Church
of Jesus Christ in these
very unfriendly and uncooperative times, you probably have to do most of your
marching beyond these walls. You will have to do your marching in homes, and
yards, and other places I can’t even think of.
Even the part of the world closest to you will not
hear you say who Jesus is when you say it in here. You will have to say it out
there.
We stand at the very edge of the map. Jesus (who
carries the scars in his hands and feet, and side for having marched this way
before) now says, in an alarming way for which you can never be prepared:
“Follow me!”