Sermons & Meditations

Matthew 4:12–23
Presented January 27, 2008, by J.D. Kline
Second Baptist Church—shared worship

Jesus begins his ministry with a challenging call to embrace a new way of living. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 4:17 NRSV). Other translations put it, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand” (JB); “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is upon you” (NEB); “You must change your hearts and minds—for the kingdom of heaven has arrived” (J.B. Phillips).

When we hear the word repent, we are perhaps most likely to envision a John-the-Baptist-hell-fire-breathing preacher pointing a finger at us, raising our level of guilt and threatening us with a call to change or else suffer the consequences of deep and abiding punishment. But when Jesus issued the call to repentance, he was not simply piling guilt and remorse upon our heads; Jesus was prodding us to change how we live and inviting us to embrace a markedly new way of living. The Greek word for repentance, metanoia, literally means to turn, to go in a new direction in life, to adopt a new mind—a new way of thinking, to take on a sharply new identity. You may remember the Baptist preacher Clarence Jordan, founder of an interracial community in Georgia back in the 1940s, who wrote the Cotton Patch Version of the Gospels. Jordan paraphrases Jesus’ call to repentance this way: Reshape your lives, for God’s new order of the Spirit is confronting you.

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Isaiah 49:1–7
Presented January 20, 2008, by J.D. Kline
The Second Sunday after Epiphany

I find this morning’s text from Isaiah 49 to be one of the most fascinating portions of all Scripture. Biblical scholars recognize chapters 40-55 as the work of a second Isaiah who anticipates the return of the exiles from their bleak days of forced banishment in Babylon to their beloved homeland in Israel. In poetic and visionary language the prophet foresees a highway opening through the desert upon which God will lead his people home—with valleys lifted up and mountains brought low, and the very desert fraught with new life. Second Isaiah envisions an unnamed servant whose task it is to call the ancient Israelites back to their true identity as the people of God. It is an identity that centers not upon withdrawing into a small enclave, with the Israelites holding the gift of God’s gracious love solely to themselves, but rather an identity focusing upon God’s people embracing the noble call to be light to all the nations. It is a call to live in such a way that others are drawn to God’s compassionate, renewing, redeeming presence.

The servant senses a call to re-form the people into a community of the faithful, persons who stand firm even in the face of grief and pain and loss. It is a call so compelling, so life-consuming that the servant contends, “The Lord called me before I was born; while I was in my mother’s womb God named me” (Isaiah 49:1). It is a demanding task—this call upon the servant to give new shape to the people Israel as they return to their beloved homeland, a calling so arduous that the servant cries out in despair, “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity” (v. 4). Another translation puts it, “I’ve nothing to show for a life of hard work” (The Message).

Who among us has not had moments when it feels as if too much is being required of us, times when we feel as if our labors are in vain, that all we are doing is pushing up against an unmovable wall? Long-time peace activist and priest Daniel Berrigan reminds us that the blessing and call of God involve “no perpetual infusion of sweetness and light.” Rather, the task is frequently hard, and most often thankless. Indeed, this is the servant’s struggle—his sense that, try as he may, the people just don’t get it! The people little grasp what it means to live in God’s spirit; they are ill prepared to reclaim their identity as Israel. Berrigan describes this as the “nearly unbearable tension between God’s long view and the servant’s anguish.”

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Acts 8:26-40
Presented January 13, 2008, by J.D. Kline
The First Sunday after Epiphany

It’s an intriguing tale—this story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. It’s one of the stories that brings to life the early church’s mission received from the risen Jesus as he prepares to ascend into heaven. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). With much frequency the early Christians found themselves encountering persons they would have little noticed—let alone entered into relationship with—prior to their transforming encounter with Jesus. Acts, chapter eight, begins with Philip, an early deacon in the church, proclaiming the gospel in Samaria, a site generally avoided by faithful Jews in that day because of the centuries-old hostilities between the two peoples. Nevertheless, Philip takes the risk of preaching the gospel to those who had long been held at arm’s distance.

In the follow-up story that forms this morning’s lesson, Luke tells us that an angel of the Lord directs Philip out into the wilderness, where he encounters the Ethiopian eunuch. What’s most intriguing about the story is that the eunuch has already traveled the long distance from Ethiopia to Jerusalem to worship in the temple, even though he was most surely aware that he would not be welcome. The eunuch displays an intense spiritual hunger, a yearning for deep and abiding connection with God, that prompts him to embrace a tradition from which he would be barred. Not only was he looked down upon as an Ethiopian, but even more, Jewish law made it clear that a castrated male, a eunuch, could not be admitted into God’s assembly (Deuteronomy 23:1).

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