“Capernaum, Chorazin and Bethsaida: Jesus’ Costly Grace," Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

(complete sermon with citations can be found here

and a recording of the service can be found here)

“Capernaum, Chorazin and Bethsaida: Jesus’ Costly Grace”

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

St. Paul Lutheran Church, Arlington, MA

Vicar Samm Melton-Hill

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"Let us pray.

Open our ears, O Lord,

to hear your word and know your voice.

Speak to our hearts and strengthen our wills,

so that we may serve you now and always."

Amen.

When I was in high school, I took a number of classes from a particular teacher who was beloved throughout the school. We will call her Mrs. Brown. Now, Mrs. Brown was the sweetest woman I had come to know. She was understanding, encouraging, loving, forgiving, always even keeled and reasonable. She had a way of connecting with each student in a unique way, finding your own interests and letting those curiosities blossom throughout the year. She was, very simply, one of those teachers who you never seem to forget. In my teenage eyes, she was near perfect both as a teacher, and as a human.

And then one day, as high school students often do, we were pressing our luck with her, goofing off, not paying attention. Now, before this point, I thought Mrs. Brown was unbreakable, but on this particular day, it finally happened. She stood in front of the class, took a textbook and dropped it on the ground, creating an echoing “boom” throughout the room. It halted the class. We all stopped, silently looking at her in disbelief. And then….she started yelling. I couldn’t believe it. She was angry, her voice was raised, she was clearly frustrated and at a loss.

I have no idea what she said in those few sobering minutes of anger, but I remember this moment so clearly because it was the same moment when I realized she was human. At some point in our childhoods, we have all likely had similar experiences. Whether it was our parents losing their cool, or another adult doing something unreasonable, at some point, we realized everyone older than us, those that seem so wise and put together, are just humans too.

And similarly, when we read a story in the Bible, and Jesus gets angry, I pay attention. Jesus’ frustration and anger remind me that he is human.

All of our readings for this morning have a rich theme of justice, hope, and humility. Our Gospel reading from Matthew chapter 11 has a lot going on, including a frustrated and angry Jesus. Very simply, this chapter in Matthew is an exploration of various responses to Jesus’ message and ministry.

It begins with the misunderstood children in the marketplace, goes on to compare the ministry of John the Baptist and Jesus, and then ends with Jesus’ prayer for the people.

You may have noticed that the reading for today, cuts out the middle part. We read together, chapter 11 verses 16-19 and then skipped to verses 25-30. So, what happened in the middle? This small section often gets cut out on Sunday mornings because, well, it’s a lot of geography that doesn’t really make sense without some deep study and background. This part that gets skipped over says:

"Next Jesus let fly on the cities where he had worked the hardest but whose people had responded the least, shrugging their shoulders and going their own way. “Doom to you, Chorazin! Doom, Bethsaida! If Tyre and Sidon had seen half of the powerful miracles you have seen, they would have been on their knees in a minute. At Judgment Day they’ll get off easy compared to you. And Capernaum! With all your peacock strutting, you are going to end up in the abyss. If the people of Sodom had had your chances, the city would still be around. At Judgment Day they’ll get off easy compared to you.”

This translation comes from a version of the Bible called the Message, which deserves a fair amount of criticism at times for it’s translations, but here, I use it because it lets us understand this part of Jesus’ speech a little bit easier.

As I was reading, we hear a number of cities mentioned by Jesusㄧ Capernaum, Chorazin and Bethsaidaㄧ and I wondered what the significance of these cities were to Jesus’ audience? Those listening obviously would have been familiar with these references, so what was it about these towns that made Jesus so angry? Of course, I’m not the first person to ask this question, but “I searched to find out about Capernaum, Chorazin and Bethsaida to see if there was anything notorious about them.” Another Pastor discovered that “they were all nondescript little fishing villages in Galilee, the small villages where most of [Jesus’] disciples came from. Nothing in the Gospels points towards these villages being full of…” anything particular sinful, “...but apparently Jesus' main complaint is that they were apathetic whiners.” He goes on to say that, “[Jesus] had preached and healed, what Matthew called acts of power, and they were unmoved, going on about the business of catching fish. [Jesus] compares them to children in the marketplace, critiques them for not welcoming John or Jesus.”

Jesus is so angry because these little fishing villages, these towns and communities of people, didn’t seem to be receptive to either the rough style of camel hair wearing and locust eating John, or the nice clothing and fancy dinner parties of Jesus. They seemed unresponsive, unmoved by much of anything. This is particularly frustrating to Jesus because he begins to see that these communities don’t want the change that a Savior would bring, they don’t want the real challenge of living a life for God, but instead they simply want someone to come along and tell them they’re doing just fine, maybe offer them a blessing, and let them return to their daily lives. They seem more interested in preserving the status quo than the disruption that Jesus’ ministry would bring. It seems they want the comfort of Jesus, without the challenge.

Jesus gets angry at the empire and the political imperialism of Rome over and over again, but in this story we get a different cause of anger from Jesus. And so, we pay attention.

Jesus isn’t angry with these people because they are outrightly unjust. On the surface, they don’t appear to be as harmful as the larger cities wielding their political power in dangerous ways. They are just kind of normal little towns, the Arlington, Winchester, or Waltham of this time. Yet, they don’t seem to realize that they need Jesus in their lives. Jesus is angry with them for their indifference and apathy towards injustice. They don’t believe they need Jesus in their lives.

They seem to be perfectly fine with the status quo, almost as if to say, “What did we do? Look at those Kings over there, haven’t you seen what they are doing!”

This is the moment that causes Jesus to stand in front of the class and drop the textbook to the ground.

Jesus is speaking politically here, as he so often does, but he is also providing his followers with a glimpse into what being a follower of him, or what discipleship looks like. Pastor David Lose reads this passage in a similar way saying, “Here’s the difficult truth about life in Christ. You cannot enter into it and expect to be unchanged. Which means a precondition of receiving Jesus (and his grace) – perhaps the only one! – is to recognize your need for Jesus.”

What we can learn from our passage today is our need for what Bonhoeffer refers to as costly grace. Bonhoeffer compares the experience of grace when following Jesus as costly grace, as opposed to cheap grace.

“Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a [person] to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: ‘My yoke is easy and my burden is light.’”

In our story today, those little fishing towns, Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum, seem to only be interested in this other kind of cheap grace. They are interested in, “the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession.” This cheap grace, as Bonhoeffer puts it, is “grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”

I too am tempted to fall into the same kind of cheap grace, the kind of apathy and indifference as the people of those towns Jesus is going on about. Sometimes, the problems of the world feel too big, too complicated, and as some might say, other people don’t seem to be as bothered as I am, so why don’t I get on with my business and just go fishing? At least I’m not as bad as them, over there.

The power of the Gospel is that we are reminded that such passiveness and apathy is not what it looks like to follow Jesus. As tempting as it is, we find much more fulfillment, learn more from Jesus, and grow closer to God, in that costly grace that Bonhoeffer speaks of.

Every Sunday, we are reminded of what it looks like to follow Jesus. Of course we find direction in our sharing of the Word and Sacraments, but there is a reason we begin service with a time of Confession and Forgiveness. The very first thing we do when starting service is recognize our need for Jesus. We begin with confession as a way of opening ourselves up to the teaching of Jesus and the Word of God. It is only when I recognize my need for Jesus, that my heart can be vulnerable enough to hear God’s Word.

Luther himself was obsessed with the need for confession and forgiveness in his own life.

While he was in the monastery, it is said that most brothers would spend a few minutes in confession with the Father every morning, while Luther would spend hours and hours confessing. He was haunted by his sins, so much so that he was in a constant state of anxiety, unable to perform chores or studies, because of his need to confess, which I can only imagine made him quite unpopular at the monastery.

This obsession, Luther’s fear of God’s judgement is not what we want to model from him. Instead, we learn more about the role of forgiveness and God’s work in our lives from Luther’s turnaround, when he goes from crazed confessing monk, to a disciple of Christ and student of the Bible.

The story is that “As a result of [Luther’s] distress, the leader of the monastery (Johan Staupitz) counseled Luther to set aside his theological books and study the Bible. His mentor (Staupitz) began to teach Luther that “true repentance consists not in self-imposed penances and punishments, but in a change of heart.” Luther’s counselor pushed him from knowing a God of judgment to a God of love, grace, and forgiveness. Luther would not have been satisfied with a type of passive grace, but instead found hope in the costly grace of Jesus. And while Luther never truly got over his obsession with his own sinfulness, he did recognize that grace and forgiveness must follow sin and confession.

I share this story about Luther for you, because I believe it allows us to see clearly one of the ways we can often avoid becoming like those fishing towns, one of the ways we can shift away from our own judgment of others and away from our tendency to be passive observers in the face of injustice, is to remain honest and vulnerable with ourselves and with God. As Christians, we do this through confession and forgiveness, something us Lutherans aren’t always so great at focusing on.

I leave you this morning with a poem from a Christian poet and one of my favorites, Jan Richardson entitled Rend Your Heart:

To receive this blessing,

all you have to do

is let your heart break.

Let it crack open.

Let it fall apart

so that you can see

its secret chambers,

the hidden spaces

where you have hesitated

to go.

Your entire life

is here, inscribed whole

upon your heart’s walls:

every path taken

or left behind,

every face you turned toward

or turned away,

every word spoken in love

or in rage,

every line of your life

you would prefer to leave

in shadow,

every story that shimmers

with treasures known

and those you have yet

to find.

It could take you days

to wander these rooms.

Forty, at least.

And so let this be

a season for wandering

for trusting the breaking

for tracing the tear

that will return you

to the One who waits

who watches

who works within

the rending

to make your heart

whole.

Amen.

Image: "Abraham and Isaac," John August Swanson. Artwork held in the Luther Seminary Fine Arts Collection, St. Paul, Minn.