Matthew 4:17-23.
Last week Pastor Kirk spoke about Jesus’ unexpected teaching in the Beatitudes. The prevailing view was that God’s blessing was for the wealthy, the powerful, and the meticulous keepers of the Law of Moses.
But Jesus proclaimed God’s blessing on the poor, the brokenhearted, the weak, the vulnerable and the oppressed. To say that such people were loved and blessed by God seemed against all opinion and evidence. Jesus’ words were a shock to everyone. They turned people’s understanding of God’s kingdom up-side-down.
In today’s passage we see that Jesus put into practice what he preached. In choosing his apostles, he didn’t pick the wealthy, who could have financed his ministry. He didn’t pick respected religious leaders who could have influenced others to join his movement. He didn’t pick soldiers to fight the occupying Roman army.
Instead, he chose a few poor fishermen and a despised tax collector. These were not the selections that the Messiah was expected to make! Yet for Jesus, such actions were typical. We see throughout the Scriptures that this is God’s usual pattern of working. God does the unexpected.
We see the unexpected in the incarnation itself. God had promised through the prophets that he himself would personally come in great power and save his people. Whatever people thought that would look like, they certainly didn’t expect God to come as a baby born to an impoverished, unknown family from Galilee.
Nor did they expect that baby to grow up to be a non-violent Messiah who would die crucified on a Roman cross. Jesus’ death was, as the Apostle Paul later wrote, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks. A crucified Messiah was a scandal. Who could accept such a thing!
But that’s how God worked – the ultimate act of self-giving love. And to those who believe, it is the wisdom of God and the power of God.
We see God’s surprising work in the ministry of the Apostle Peter. Since the time of Abraham, male members of God’s covenant people were commanded to be circumcised. But God guided Peter to baptize Cornelius and his family, uncircumcised Gentiles, extending the circle of God’s mercy, and to receive them into the church.
This was completely unexpected, and it stunned the apostles and elders of the Jerusalem church. They called a big meeting to try to figure it all out. And in the end they revised their interpretation of the Scriptures.
Likewise with the Apostle Paul. Saul of Tarsus, before he became known as the Apostle Paul, was a strict Pharisee, zealous for the Law of Moses. He hated the new Jesus movement and believed that its followers were blasphemers. He also despised the unclean and uncircumcised Gentiles.
But Jesus surprised him on the road to Damascus and called him to love the Gentiles and to live among them as equals, proclaiming the Gospel to them. Paul never could have imagined this. He was so shaken that God made him blind for three days to give him time to come to terms with his new reality!
It reminds me of the experience of one of my mentors in Christ, Jim Boren. He and his wife — we called them Brother and Sister Boren — were missionaries to Jamaica in the 1950s.
As they began to plant new churches Bro. Boren saw that God was anointing women to serve as pastors. But this was contrary to the teachings and official policy of his denomination, and contrary to what he himself had believed. It was unexpected. Women pastors! Shocking!
But like the Apostle Peter, Bro. Boren knew what he had seen. He wrote his denominational headquarters describing what God was doing, telling them that the Holy Spirit was working. And like Peter told the Council in Jerusalem, Bro. Boren wrote, “Who was I to oppose God.” With God’s help, Bro. Boren opened his mind to a new way of thinking.
Sometimes God unexpectedly breaks us out of our old ideas and gives us a new understanding of his works and ways in love. But that is not always easy for us to accept.
You’ve probably heard of John Newton, author of the great hymn Amazing Grace. He was a slave ship captain and was making a lot of money in the slave trade in the 1700s. And then he became a believer in Jesus.
What you may not know is that for years afterwards he continued to traffic in enslaved human beings. At first he didn’t see the contradiction between being a slaver and following Jesus. This was because the churches at that time all taught that slavery was God’s will. The idea that God was against slavery would have been astonishing to most Christians of that era.
Only later was John Newton able to see that what he’d been taught about slavery was wrong. He renounced his former way of life and called for slavery to be abolished. He wrote, “I cannot consider myself to have been a believer in the full sense until a considerable time after [my initial conversion].”
Tradition can exercise a powerful hold on us, as it did on John Newton. It can prevent us from seeing what God is really doing. What God is really like. But our life in Christ isn’t a matter of keeping a tight grip on to what we already think we know.
Our life of faith is a great and joyous adventure with Jesus. A journey that is forever surprising us with wonders beyond our imagination. As disciples of Jesus, we are always ready to embrace God’s unexpected work of love in our lives. Ready to grow and change when God calls us to.
That is the meaning of the term disciple. A disciple is a learner. Our entire life in Christ is one of constant learning.
Brothers and sisters, we don’t know what the year ahead will bring to us individually and as a church. We don’t know what God is going to do. But we know that God is love, and that he always acts in love. And if God follows his usual way of working, he’s likely to do something unexpected.
Such uncertainty can make us feel anxious, but it doesn’t have to. In C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, a lion named Aslan represents Jesus. A little girl named Lucy is a bit scared, afraid that Aslan is dangerous. She asks Mr. Beaver, “is he a safe lion?” “Is Aslan safe?” “Oh, no,” replies Mr. Beaver, “Aslan isn’t safe. But he’s good.”
Jesus isn’t safe. He calls us in unexpected ways. He challenges us in love to learn and grow and change. He frees us to journey with him on the astonishing and sometimes puzzling adventure of faith.
Because Jesus isn’t safe. But he’s good.