Watch for Signs

Sermon Matthew 16:1-12 January 26, 2020 Ordinary Time

Watch for Signs

In this 16^th chapter of Matthew Jesus is met by religious leaders again to test him. They appear in the gospel of Matthew as antagonists and as resisters to the truth Jesus is teaching. Both Sadducees and pharisees were the keepers of the Torah, they were the experts, they were the ones that knew the truth.

People came to them to know how to live, how to interpret God’s law for their life.

People trusted them.

And now they are threatened by the person of Jesus who has come to teach about the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus, a man who has never been to college or had the training of these leaders, is telling others about the truth of God and has a following that threatens the status quo of the life of faith of the Jewish people.

So what do all good religious leaders,

or any other leaders,

do when they feel threatened?

They throw out ways to catch the

person in a lie,

a falsehood,

a misstep.

They ask him for a sign about God, “Give us a sign about heaven.”

They want to dispute Jesus’ identity and trap him so they can verify that he is a fraud.

So Jesus points to the sky and talks about the weather!

How many looked to the sky this morning on the way to church? How many turned on the weather app before getting dressed this morning?

Weather is something we take for granted.

We make fun of the weather meteorologists when they get the weather right or wrong.

We have scientists who climb into planes and vans and boats and chase storms, tornadoes, and hurricanes in order to learn more about them for the safety and sake of human life and property.

Just trying to understand weather trends is important for economics, for farmers to improve their planting and harvesting seasons, for families to plan vacations, for national parks to know when to open or close, for oceanographers to know how to help freighters to navigate the seas as they transport products around the world.

Everyday on our sailing trip we used our satellite phone to download a weather grib file. And we also used our Single side band radio to obtain the global weather charts. These tools are amazing. And they were amazingly accurate. We were able to be prepared for the high winds and seas that were forecast and to make choices ahead of time about our sails or our course. These tools provided information for sailors to maintain safety as they cross oceans.

In Jesus’ day looking to the sky, ‘red sky at night sailor’s delight, red sky in the morning, sailor take warning’ was the best they had for weather prediction.  

I have taken our weather predictions for granted assuming they had always been something important.

But, when I recently watched the movie the “Aeronauts” about James Glaisher and his ballooning efforts in 1862 to fly as high into the atmosphere as possible, it dawned on me how we have only recently accepted study as science.

As human’s we have an insatiable need to know and to understand. It is what drives our will to discover and to learn.

The trouble for us starts when

we seek to understand

in order to control.

Jesus’ responds to the leaders who are trying to control him, to trap him.

They are asking him for a sign.

They had their expectations of who and what a messiah should be and they wanted him to prove that he was a fake.

Jesus knew how to live above the fray.

He knew how to be exactly who he was as the Son of God

without falling into the temptation to ‘prove himself’.

The leaders were unable to control his message.

They could not make him go away.

Jesus was too skilled at confrontation.

Jesus dismisses them with the statement,

‘the sign you’ll get is the sign of Jonah’.

Which Jesus said to refer to his death and his resurrection.

It seems we are at our worst when we assume we have all the answers.

When we are in positions of authority, are educated, have life experience, we tend to overlord to others what is right and wrong. Or worse what is right and what is true.

If we are met with the possibility that something could be opposite of our way of understanding, believing, behaving, how do we respond?

Our first reaction is disbelief and resistance.

As educated leaders we consider ourselves the elite and become offended by another idea, viewpoint, or worse another truth. Humans are fickle creatures.

Imagine with me if you will.

Another truth is introduced-perhaps it’s the fact that chickens lay eggs that are brown and blue. But we have never witnessed brown or blue eggs. We only know that chickens lay white eggs. Our truth is threatened. Our truth may be wrong. We might have to admit that we are wrong.

Something like this may not affect my identity or alter who I am.

But, truths about slavery, human trafficking, poverty, the value of people have all been threats to the ways people have thought through time and especially recent times in our history such as WWII.

To accept a truth would place us in the position of having to alter who we are and our identity.

Jesus was a threat

to the very identity

of the religious leaders

and all they have ever believed.

When I was in South Africa and listened to the seminary professors and how they had to rewrite all their theology of the African black race, we were still witnessing the pain on their faces as they had difficulty saying they were wrong.

How do we act or respond when our identity is threatened like that?

Those who spoke truth in the name of faith…Polycarp, Blandine were burned at the stake. Those who spoke the truth against inhumane treatment of others…lost everything, Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela.

What truths is God calling us to speak?

The gospel writer Matthew knew as he wrote to the new Christians in the diaspora that they would be facing many challenges in their life of faith. They would discover that they would not be accepted anywhere. They would discover that their new truth in Jesus would be challenged.

And they would also discover (I believe) that their understanding of truth would continue to challenge their identity as their faith evolved.

As believers, the truth we know is always challenged.

It is through the personhood of Christ that we can have the courage to listen, seek to understand, and wonder if God is not seeking to teach a truth we have yet to discover.

When we look at the rest of these verses from 5-12 we learn that Jesus is just as troubled with his disciples as he is with the religious leaders.

He can’t believe they still don’t understand his identity, his authority, his ability to perform miracles. Matthew places this encounter following the discourse with the leaders to point out that even the disciples struggle to understand.

There is a gap of understanding about Jesus’ identity on all sides.

The truth of Jesus is a discovery for all who encounter him.

Jesus shows concern for the anxiety the disciples show in their lack of understanding so he admonishes them about their faith. He pushes them, he challenges them to have the confidence in their faith. He admonishes them with their anxiety with his words, ‘you of little faith’-had they already forgotten the miracles Jesus did the day before? We forget the truth of ourselves so quickly. We forget the truth of our faith. We forget who and whose we are in our times of anxiety. We allow our frustrations to take control and we act as if Jesus is nowhere near us. We forget our own capabilities, our own capacity for living truth. We lapse into the control of the world around us and get bounced around like a boat on the sea without a rudder.

I learned a lesson about control and weather and understanding the signs around us when we were at sea.

While we were seeking understanding of the weather forecasts we were adjusting our sails to accommodate the 20-25 knot winds.

Sailing downwind can be very uncomfortable as the waves knock the boat from side to side. We would do our best to adjust our autopilot response to the waves to try to be a little more comfortable. But, one day after being thrown about the boat by the waves, getting soaked by the ones that came over the stern, and getting mad at having to constantly have one hand on something to keep from falling, I shook my fist at the wind and the waves.

I said, ‘what is it that neither the wind nor the sea obey her!”

We seek to control the external over which we have no control.

Jesus says look for the signs-not control them.

I realized there was nothing I could do about the external wind and waves.

The wind was going to blow at 20-25 knots with 30 knot gusts.

The ocean was going to continue to throw rogue waves our way in the midst of 10 foot swells. That WAS the truth.

We knew the weather forecast.

We knew the capacity of our boat.

We knew the capability of our sailing.

We couldn’t control the external factors,

but we could work our little boat within them.

We could adjust how we moved through the water. We could adjust how we handled our anxiety. Once I settled and laughed at myself in the midst of this crazy ocean, I was able to go with the truth of the way things were knowing that the calm was just ahead.

We can’t control the signs, the weather, the world around us.

But we can adjust our little boats to navigate

through them and

to learn new ways to deal

with the storms that come.

Watch for signs is what Jesus expects of all those who believe and don’t believe.

Keep an eye out for an encounter with Christ that will change our life. Don’t be anxious for anything. Let the truth of Jesus be our identity. Let the truth of Jesus be our guide and our strength. Be lost in his love and be at peace.

Amen.