Resurrection Sign
Text:
Matthew 12:38-42
Brian
K. Blount, President, Union Presbyterian Seminary
(Installation Service for Pastor
Gary Charles, October 30, 2016)
This
scripture does not contain a fun Jesus saying. You were probably thinking to
yourself as I read it: “why in the world did Brian choose this
decidedly-not-fun Jesus saying on the occasion of this intentionally fun
celebration of Gary starting out his ministry here at Cove? Isn't there a nicer
version of Jesus that Brian could have invited to worship this morning?”
Anybody
who reads the gospels knows that they contain two distinct Jesus moods. There
is the nice Jesus, who sighs such soothing sentiments as "take my yoke
upon you and I will give you rest." And then there is the hard Jesus, the
one who passionately pounds out provocations like "you brood of
vipers." Doesn’t our scripture highlight the hard Jesus? Why did Brian
invite the hard Jesus to this
particular party of the pious?
Here
is probably a good opportunity for me to blame it on God. God told me to preach on this scripture
this morning. It’s about divine inspiration. It’s a Holy Ghost thing. You non
preachers wouldn’t understand.
To
tell the truth, I hardly understand it myself. I was thinking about Gary and I
was thinking about this wonderful celebration and I was thinking about
preaching and I woke up in the middle of the night and I thought, "Oh!!!!
That text where people ask Jesus for a sign and Jesus refuses to give them a
sign." In my half sleep state, I couldn't even remember in which Gospel
Jesus said this. I don't like Matthew all that much as far as the gospels go. I
know, the four Gospels are supposed to be like your children, right. You don't
love one more than you love the others. You certainly don’t say it out loud if
you do. You love them all equally. That's the parental story and every parent
in his or her right mind had better stick to it. So, if someone comes up to me
and asks, "Brian, which gospel do you like the best?" You know what
I'm gonna say. "I love them all equally." Well, do you like one of
them less than you like the others? "I love them all equally." OK.
But the truth is, in the middle of the night, I am hoping and praying that
Jesus didn't say this in Matthew because I just don't like Matthew as much as I
like Mark. Mark's my favorite. I might
as well go ahead and say it. And Matthew drives me crazy. Because Matthew
spiritualizes stuff. For example, when he listened to the story of Jesus'
Sermon on the Mount, instead of sharing what Luke shared, “Blessed are the poor,” Matthew interpreted what Jesus
said as “blessed are the poor in spirit.”
People like it when you tone stuff down, make it all “spiritual” so they don’t
have to do anything to change
anything physical or literal in their lives or in their
world. People love to be ALL SPIRITUAL. “I’m spiritual, but not religious.” Matthew
would have loved that! Spiritually
Poor?! I want to hear about God blessing the
literal poor. Let those of us who are materially rich but spiritually poor
buy our own blessings. But noooo, Matthew claims that God has gone all
spiritual!!!! Doggone it, Matthew!!!
Yes,
I know this is poor gospel parentage. I ought to love Matthew as much as I love
Mark.
So,...feeling
chastened, when I got up in the morning and my head was clearer, even after I
realized that Jesus speaks the pertinent sign language in the Gospel of
Matthew, I said, I'm still going to
use it. And, thank goodness, for once, Matthew doesn't spiritualize. He doesn't
interpret Jesus to be saying that folks seek a spiritual sign from Jesus. As Tom Long notices, this is a demand
for physical proof. Tom writes:
“Having tangled with Jesus, the leaders now demand to see some
credentials...[they] have now pulled him over and want to see his license.” Rightly,
Matthew therefore does not hear Jesus strike back that only a spiritually misaligned generation seeks
a sign. Jesus takes this as a real,
physical, literal challenge and he responds with real, literal anger and
sarcasm. For once, Matthew doesn't water down a thing. He just says what he
heard Jesus say. And that is probably why, upon waking up and being more clear
headed and right minded, I should have looked for another scripture.
But
I'm stubborn. And I remember. I remember one of my teachers. Cain Hope Felder
is his name. Cain preached the sermon the only time I have been installed at a
church. It was a time before I'd ever met Gary Charles. It was 1982. I was 24
years old. 23 years of my life I had been a Baptist. Before the end of my first
year as a Presbyterian, I was being installed as the pastor of Carver Memorial
Presbyterian Church. And Cain, though not using this text, preached about a
sign. A sign of God that Cain said was manifested in my crossing over, like the
people of faith crossed over the Jordan to become a new people. I had crossed
over a denominational line and yet had remained within the family of faith, in a new way. That, he said, was a sign.
Of God. At work.
On
the surface, the request for a sign from Jesus that God is at work seems like
such an innocent request. We look for such signs all the time. Don’t we? Don’t
we?
But
this is precisely where Tom Long finds it difficult to understand the leaders
who are asking Jesus for a sign. “What do they have in mind?” he asks. “What
else in the way of a sign could they conceivably
expect? They have already seen miracles of every imaginable type: The blind
see, the deaf hear, lepers are cleansed, the mute speak, the paralyzed walk,
the demon- possessed are made whole. They obviously want something more,
something even more dramatic that will assure them that Jesus is from God.
Maybe a light shining from heaven would do the trick, or perhaps a voice from
the skies.”
In
fact, in Matthew, there was a voice from the skies. At Jesus' baptism. Matthew
makes it clear in the way he narrates the story that Jesus was not the only one
who heard the voice. The voice spoke to everyone. "This is my beloved, son," they heard the voice say. So, there
was a voice in the sky. Right?! They actually had such a mighty sign. And still
they do not believe.
One starts to think
that perhaps the problem isn't that there are signs, but that there ARE signs. God has given them signs. All the healing, all the teaching, all the
from the sky speaking. They had sign after sign after sign. The problem is that the signs are pointing
to something they don't want the signs to point to. The signs are pointing to
Jesus and Jesus is doing stuff that they do not find acceptable. They think
something is wrong with Jesus and they want a sign to prove that Jesus is all
right. All right with God, that is. All right with their kind of God, that is.
If
I want God to validate what I'm doing, what I think is right, no matter what,
then I want a sign that says, "Brian, yes, you're right." I don't
want a sign that says something contrary to what I want to do. I want the sign
to confirm what I want to do, even if what I want to do is not what everyone
else wants me to do. So, when I ask my wife, after a wonderful meal, "do
you think we should order dessert?" I don't really want her to weigh the
appropriateness of getting a calorie rich dessert after the very full meal I've
already had. I already know I don't need
dessert. I already know I should just
tell myself "no." I ask because I want her to tell me "yes." And if she tells me
"no," I think I want to find out what's wrong with her. That's when I
want her to give me a sign that she
continues to maintain control of all her mental faculties. So, even though it
makes no sense to her, it makes perfect sense to me when I then ask, "are
you feeling all right? Give me a sign." I mean, she told me "no"
on the dessert. Something must be wrong with her. I need a sign that everything
is actually all right. Whenever I ask
her, "what did you think of my sermon this morning," I don't want an
honest appraisal. I don't want THE TRUTH. I want a lie. A nice, Christian lie.
Because if I'm asking how it went, I already know it didn't go as I had wanted
it to go. I ask because I want her to tell me, "Oh, you knocked out of the
park this morning, preacher!" So, as soon as she starts off with something
like, "Well, you know..." then I know it’s no longer about the
sermon; something must be wrong with her.
So, I need a sign from her that everything is all right. So, even though it
makes no sense to her, it makes perfect sense to me when I interrupt her before
she can go on with whatever sermon observation point she is intending to make,
"are you feeling all right? Give me a sign." I mean, she is actually
going to answer my question honestly!! Something
must be wrong. I therefore need a sign that everything is actually all right.
The
scribes and Pharisees here are caught up in the exact same situation. They need
a sign because something is clearly wrong
with Jesus! They want Jesus to stop
doing things his way and start doing things their way. Because he's not just
healing folks, he's teaching folks. He's teaching by how he lives and what he
says. And he is doing and saying some dangerous stuff. Breaking laws that ought
not to be broken. Touching people who ought not be touched. Hanging out with
people who ought not to be hung out with. And claiming that this kind of
radically disreputable behavior is the kind of behavior God desires.
It
is bad enough that Jesus is doing all the stuff he is saying and doing. What is
even worse is that he is backing up all the stuff he is saying and doing with
all these miracles. These SIGNS! The man
has power! Real, raw, outrageous
power. Even his enemies give him that. There
is no need for the scribes and Pharisees to declare that Jesus is faking these
events. They agree: he has power! So,
how do you compete with a person with whom you so vigorously disagree who is so
clearly powerful. Well, you don't challenge his power. You challenge where he
gets his power from. That is what is really
behind this request for a sign.
So,
they put out the story that Jesus has power, but it is demonic power. It must
be Satan's power. His power is a sign that Satan has broken loose in the world.
Here is where Jesus unleashes the brood of vipers quote. And right after he
calls them a brood of vipers, the snakes slither up to him, call him Teacher,
so the crowd can see them fawning all over him, and they try to trap him by
asking him for a sign. What they say out loud for the people to hear is that
they want is a sign that demonstrates that Jesus is all right, that he is of
God and not of Satan. Just clear this up for us, Jesus. Do a little magic. And
connect that magic to God.
Devious.
And smart. They want Jesus to make a show of power for the sake of showing
power. That is in itself demonic, isn't it? Showing off power just because you
have power. Prove you are smarter than everybody else by doing something that
makes the rest of us feel dumb. Prove
you are wealthier than the rest of us by buying something the rest of us
couldn't afford. Prove you are more powerful than the rest of us by putting
some innocent somebody in her place. Go ahead, show off. And in showing off,
prove to these people that you're not working to glorify God, you're working to
glorify yourself. You're not divine. You're demonic. They don't want the truth
from Jesus. They already KNOW the truth. They want Jesus to prove their lie.
That's why they ask him for a sign. They need him to give them a sign so they
can use that sign against him.
No
sign, though. That's his answer. No sign.
Except
the sign of the prophet Jonah.
Wait...What???!!!
Jonah!
What???!!!
The.
Sign. Of. Jonah.
And
they will play a role in bringing that Jonah sign about. They will help create
the circumstance that kills Jesus, because they did not trust that he was of
God. And after they have destroyed him, after they have put him down, entombed
him in the earth, God will raise him up in the way that God raised Jonah out of
the belly of the sea monster. After they have satisfied themselves that Jesus
is not of God, after they have taken Jesus’ life because he is not of God, ONLY
THEN will God give them a sign. A completely unreasonable, incredulous,
inconceivable sign. Life after death. Resurrection. Because something greater
than the law is here. Something greater than Jonah is here. Something greater
than Solomon is here. Something so great that it defies the reason that we seek
to explain and make sense of our lives is here. Something that makes no sense
and yet is the only sense God has to offer is here. Something unlike anything
they have ever seen before is here. Something so inconceivable, in fact, that
Jesus doesn't even try to explain it to them. He knows they would never believe
it.
I
suspect that even in the first century most of the people in the crowd thought
the Jonah episode was the biggest fish story they had ever heard. That story
makes NO sense. So, Jesus using it as
the answer to their request for a sign is utterly, atrociously ridiculous. It's
like you all saying to me, "preach us a sign today, Brian." And, in
response, I say, "You evil and adulterous generation, no sign will be
given to you,...except the sign of a
great preacher, wonderful pastor, and incredible large church administrator who
leaves one of the tallest of tall steeple churches, a church having perhaps the
highest of visibility in a highly visible capital city, and follows God's call
to a little rural church in a little rural town that most people will not have
heard of."
There
is your sign. That is how you know
God is at work in your world. The God who raised Jesus has raised up Gary. In
this place. Two years ago, who in here, including Gary, could have possibly
seen this coming. You want to know God is still at work. Here’s a sign.
Gary. Here. Is
a sign.
I
read this crazy novel this summer. Gary knows I read crazy books. Books about
end of the world stuff, apocalyptic stuff. A friend recently told me, in a kind
of friendly, one-on-one personal faith intervention, that I need to let go of
the zombies and the plagues and the end of the world scenarios and get back to
Jesus. Okay, Jesus, here I come. But on the way back, I stopped off at one more
end of the world novel. The Fireman by Joe Hall. Joe Hall is the son of Stephen
King, a master of apocalyptic horror fiction. That should be enough to tell you
something.
In
the novel, the end came not from a plague or a meteor or a zombie apocalypse.
The end blew in the wind that carried a spoor. A spoor. Of unknown origin. I
wrote a story once. Literary people in the know told me that you need a
believable start or no one is going to publish your story. I suppose the
alternative is that you have a bankable literary bloodline, then you don't need
a believable start. So, even though the author never explained this spoor,
where it came from, how it could have really spawned, etc., I accepted it. And
once I accepted that it existed, I could accept what it did to people, even
though on the surface that made no sense either, and the author didn't give any
medical reason for how it could work. But here it is. This spoor transmitted
through ash to people. Not by touch. By wind. Ash spreading through the wind. So,
when people were avoiding touching people who had contracted the disease the
spoor caused, and were shunning people and all of that, when they burned the
bodies of the people with the spoor because they were afraid of those bodies,
the spoor took flight in the windblown ashes and infected people who breathed
in those ashes. And since the ash was in the air all the time, the disease was
spreading all the time. Here was some nice criticism of the way we treat people
who are ill. We don't touch them. We put them away. We spiritually burn them.
In the book, they literally burned them. They were burning corpses, because
they were afraid. And because the spoor was in the ash of the burned bodies,
their fear was literally killing them. Well, when you got the disease you were
marked with a physical sign. The sign marking was another kind of nod to
contemporary culture. The marking was a tattooing. It turned out as black
drawings over people's bodies. People tried to hide the markings lest someone
try to hurt or kill them because of them. Simultaneously beautiful and deadly.
Because the markings would become even more beautiful, taking on color, and
then the marks erupted into flames and the person spontaneously combusted into
fire. They called the disease Dragonscale, because the marks created flames
that destroyed the person in fire. And then, from the ashes, the spoor took
flight until someone else breathed it in. Here was a disease you couldn't hide
from others. And others were so afraid of it they shunned and destroyed people
who had it. But every time they destroyed a person by burning that person the
disease took flight into many other persons.
The
plot twist was this. One of the heroes of the book was a man who had learned to
control Dragonscale, so that instead of the flames destroying him, he used the
flames to protect himself and others. For him, the marks were a sign of a
potential new future, not a frightening old past.
Well,
when I finished the book, after I got over feeling guilty for even reading the
book, I chastised myself for falling for all this literal fire and brimstone
with that tiny flicker of hope hiding within. And then, I thought about us
today. Us people of faith. We’re all the time looking for signs, spiritual and
physical markings of God. On people. In the world. But then I thought? Aren’t
we already marked? Really? Not by tattooed skin from some spoor, but to those
who are outside of our community, what we are selling seems just as crazy,
doesn’t it? We are marked by the inconceivable sign that Jesus promised the
leaders, and us: resurrection.
Resurrection is our
ridiculous, ludicrous, Jonah-fish-story kind of implausible call sign.
Aren’t
we, by the way we live, by the things we say, by the stuff we do the sign to
this generation that points back to the meaning and truth and consequence of
Jesus’ resurrection? Wasn’t that what Jesus was setting up when he told that
brood of vipers that the only sign this world would ever see would be the sign
of Jonah? Wasn’t he talking about Gary? Moving here? Wasn’t he talking about
you? Moving whenever and wherever you move when you do something ridiculous and
ludicrous for God. Aren’t you, aren’t we marked by Jesus’ resurrection sign?
Wasn’t that what Jesus was really saying? Aren’t we the sign to our generation
just as Jesus was the sign to his generation? Isn’t the resurrection tattooed
all over us, a spiritual God- scale
that influences how we live and what we do?
I
know what you’re thinking! There he goes, spiritualizing. But the spiritual
marking has a material, physical impact. Doesn’t it? You can’t see the sign of
the resurrection on this church, in this place, on your life. And yet, doesn’t
our resurrection marking make us do things, sometimes explosively good and
outrageously transformative things that we might not otherwise have had either
the courage or the foresight to do? Don’t we try to hide the marking sometimes,
lest people think we’re strange? Don’t we feel compelled by the power of the
marking sometimes, so we can’t help ourselves, we end up committing more of our
time, more of our energy, more of our resources, more of ourselves than we had
ever anticipated for causes and for people we could have never predicted would
ever be important to us? Doesn’t God’s resurrection marking literally shake us
out of the comfortable places where we live and work and minister and
physically move us into situations and circumstances that just. seem.
befuddling.
Aren’t
we marked?
God
Marked . . . by the same resurrection that was Jesus’ strange and mysterious sign?
And are we not, marked
as we are by the resurrection, therefore God’s Jonah sign to God’s weary world?
We are a sign to the world. Gary is a sign to us. Did not God give us a sign
when God marked Gary and through the power of that marking called Gary here to
Cove? What? Did you miss it? Can’t you see it? Can’t you feel it? Good God,
it’s tattooed all over him. It drove him here.
The
day that Gary and I first met is marked in my memory. Indelible. Transforming. Empowering.
Life giving. It was at the back basement door of the Carver Memorial Church. He
had come to survey a hunger and food program being run out of one of our church
buildings. He was drawing his church of folks who did not live in that
impoverished community into the ministry of care in that impoverished
community. He marked his church with the resurrection frenzy of bringing the
possibility of new life to a community struggling in the throes of this life.
And he has so marked every church since. His passion, his love for others, his humble
grace amidst such overwhelming ability, his friendship, his dedication to being
the very best at what he does for the community of God’s people, his sacrifice
of his own strength and power to strengthen and empower others. You look at
Gary closely enough, you listen to Gary closely enough, you watch Gary closely
enough, and you see a man marked by the resurrection. You can’t help but see
it. Because one thing Gary is not, it’s shy. Not with what he wants. Not with
what God wants from him. Not with what God wants him to call forth from us.
Gary doesn’t hide his God marking. It stands out. It’s all over him.
In
that novel, people marked by Dragonscale were distracting. So, too, are
God-Marked people distracting. Gary is distracting. You notice Gary. You always
notice people who are marked. Don’t you? But Christians aren’t all that
distracting any more, at least not in a good way, a really transformational
way. I don’t know that the world is distracted by the resurrection marking on
us. Jesus didn’t just talk about the sign of Jonah. We know that he became the
sign of Jonah. We can’t just talk about the sign of the resurrection. Like
Gary, by the way we live our lives, by the way we answer God’s call upon our
lives, we must become the sign of the resurrection. We must become the sign
that God is doing a new thing . . . in the midst of the old thing. We must
become the sign that God is bringing new life to this world choking itself to
death. So that people see the resurrection isn’t just an inconceivable,
unbelievable fish story told about the faraway past. So that people see that it
is not just a fantastical, apocalyptic story told about the faraway future. The
resurrection story is a story about now. It can be. It will be. When we who are
marked by its reality live its reality. Physically, literally, not spiritually,
LIVE its reality. Now. Like Gary is
living its reality. Now. By how and by where he has followed God’s call. Now.
I’m telling you, Gary is a sign. Everyone of us in here can be a sign. Of God.
On the move. A sign of new life breaking through old expectations.
A
person marked by the resurrection makes as little sense to most folks as Jesus
answering the demand for a sign with the sign of Jonah. Gary’s move is a sign
of faith in a world that seeks signs of reason. The reasonable view is that
power is about numbers and size. We are so worried today about how big we are,
how big our admissions numbers, how big our endowment, how big our Sunday
attendance, how big our denomination, how big our church. In making this move,
Gary has remained faithful to the resurrection marking that first compelled him
into the ministry. God’s call that you care for God’s people, not about how
many people you care for. God’s call that it is not how big your membership is,
but how big your mission is. God’s call that it is not about how many members
you drag in; it’s about how much resurrection witness you dish out. By his hearing
that call and his following that call, Gary has yet again shown me that he is
marked by the resurrection. In Gary Charles’ life, in Gary Charles’ ministry,
God has provided a spiritual and a physical resurrection sign. We shouldn’t
just marvel at this sign. We should use it, to help us mark our way, as we,
too, do our best to follow God’s call. Jesus was right. Something greater than
we have realized has happened here.
