Context distortion

Well, good morning. Let me add my welcome to that you've already received and tell you that we don't take for granted that anyone shows up on a Sunday morning, and we're grateful that you're all here with us today. My name is Derek. I'm one of the elders. For those of you that are visiting, Steven, our pastor, is what we call bivocational. He has a job that he works to pay the mortgage and feed his family. And so every once in a while, Ronnie, the other elder, and I come out of the bullpen and give him a break. So today, you get to hear me. Lucky you.

Introduction

In the late 1980s, I think it was somewhere right after the light bulb was invented—just kidding. I was an officer of the deck on my submarine, in charge of driving the ship and keeping it safe. We were a bit behind schedule. Wasn't my fault; happened on the watch before mine. But the captain tasked me that evening with trying to catch up a little bit, try and get closer to where we were supposed to be. In addition, there was this pesky freighter off in the distance that was coming our way and I was having a very difficult time trying to figure out how to get any space. Again, we were sort of backed up in our water and there wasn't much I could do. Normally I would sort of turn away or slow down and kind of let it pass, but we were behind. So I did what I could.

About midway through the watch, the captain shows up and says, "It's time to go to periscope depth. We had message traffic we needed to clear. We were on a time clock for that as well." When he arrived, I gave him the situation and told him where we were and said, "There's this freighter that I haven't been able to shake, and we seem to be on a course towards the same spot in the water."

He said he didn't think it was as close as I did, that we were behind schedule, we needed to clear our message traffic, and that it was time to go. Going to periscope depth on a submarine is one of the most dangerous things we do. We come into water where we can come in contact with other ships, and until we really know what's up there, it's a little bit of a tense moment. No one is allowed to say anything in the control room until the periscope breaks the water. The officer of the deck has a chance to clear the space, and then he says either "no close contacts" or "emergency deep." No one else is allowed to say a word until one of those two things is said.

So, we're on our way up. The periscope breaks the surface of the water. It's the middle of the night, so it's dark. I spin around—we're supposed to take two full 360° turns on the periscope. As I go by the first time, I see a light. Could be a star, could be something way off in the distance. You're just not really sure. And I think to myself, on my second time by, I'm going to need to stop, take a quick look, and figure out what that light was. Second time by, I pause for a second, and I see the bow light of a freighter not very far away, pointed directly at me. So, we call emergency deep, which triggers a whole bunch of automatic actions by a bunch of people in the control room: speed up, go deep, turn away. And we were fine. Nothing happened.

The captain said, "Well, I'll be back in a couple hours. We'll try this again, but I want you to go to our system where we track contacts and make sure that what you saw is what's reflected in our system." I went over to our system and I looked at it, and it was exactly what I saw. So, what does that tell me? That tells me we actually already had all the information. We knew what was up there, we knew how close it was, and we shouldn't have gone. The information was all there. We learned nothing new.

The context we were in—our need to make up time, our need to clear our message traffic—distorted our perception of what was up there and convinced us it was safe to go, even though we already had all the information that said we weren't. I think our context can often do that. Like when we're willing to speed at a rate we would never consider, except we're late, so we speed. Or we pay $6 for a cup of coffee in an airport when we would never do that outside of the airport. The context creates a situation where you'll do something that you wouldn't normally do. You come home, the cardboard is still sitting there, you ask the kids to clear it up, and it's still there. You had a bad day today, not yesterday, and so you kind of go off today. Again, it wasn't that the cardboard changed, but your context changed and created a different reaction. The conditions didn't change: the speed limit was the same, the coffee didn't change its value, the cardboard was still there yesterday—but your context made your reaction to it different.

We're going to read a story today about a group of people from Jesus' hometown who, in many respects, may have known more about Jesus than most everybody. But somehow this familiarity—the context they were in—didn't breed closeness or wonder or curiosity, but instead contempt and rejection. So let's read this story together. I'll read it, you can listen, and then we'll pray and jump in. It begins in Matthew chapter 13, the last six verses of the chapter:

And when Jesus had finished these parables, he went away from there, and coming to his hometown he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, "Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?" And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household." And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.

Father in heaven, it is my prayer that we would hear from you this morning. These are your words, not mine. And it is my desire that your Spirit would speak. Your words are powerful to do life-changing things. So, it is my prayer that you would speak to your people here today, that we would hear what it is that you would have for each of us. I think that's what's maybe most powerful about this, is that ultimately I'm not the speaker, you are. And your Spirit does a work in each of our lives that may be different from the person sitting next to us, and that's a miracle to me. So it is my prayer that you would do that here today, that you would speak through me to accomplish what it is that you have before us. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Feels like this is getting shorter by the minute. I'll be sitting on the floor in a minute.

Offense distortion

The first point I'm making here out of the first verses, I'm calling this offense distortion. Looking more closely at these verses again, it says:

And when Jesus had finished these parables, he went away from there, and coming to his hometown he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, "Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?" And they took offense at him.

Jesus had been teaching in the region of Capernaum, which is on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. I got a map here. See Capernaum way up there at the top of the Sea of Galilee. Okay. So he's been there teaching, and as we've talked about, he made a transition out of the synagogue into the open-air teaching, no longer so much to the Jewish leaders, but really the masses. This is a transition that he's made over the last several weeks as we've walked our way through Matthew. And he's been teaching us parables like the parable of the soils, the parable of the wheat and the weeds, and the treasure in the field and the pearl of great value. These are the parables we've been looking at over the last weeks.

Matthew tells us that he finished these parables and left there and came to his hometown. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell the same story in one form or another. I think this can be an indication at times that there was something particularly important about this particular part of the story that all three of those synoptic gospel writers felt it was important to include. As we've seen in recent weeks, Jesus has been teaching in these parables mostly to the masses, as I already said, and not engaged directly with the Jewish leadership. The crowds have been gathering.

Luke specifically identifies the hometown as Nazareth. It's about 30 miles, but it's very different. Capernaum is a fishing town right on the sea. Nazareth—you can see these mountains here—you really have to kind of come up from the Sea of Galilee into these mountains to get to Nazareth. That's what I get.

Luke specifically identifies the town as Nazareth. There's a verse in John chapter 1 when Philip comes and tells Nathanael, "Hey, come see this Jesus of Nazareth with me." And Nathanael's response is, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Even today—I've been there—Nazareth isn't much to write home about. It's a little more than a wide spot on the road, a working town without much of an identity or reputation. We see in other parts of the gospel where the reputation of the whole area of Galilee isn't great—sort of backwater, country folk, if you will. So it kind of makes me chuckle that these country folk fishermen from Capernaum would look down on Nazareth. It gives you this idea of the social order that existed. Nazareth, if it's not at the bottom, it's near the bottom of the social hierarchy. And this is where Jesus comes from. Maybe not by mistake, huh?

Matthew tells us that Jesus taught in the synagogue when he arrived in Nazareth. Luke actually fills us in a little bit and tells us he's preaching out of Isaiah 61. These are the verses, Isaiah 61:1–3:

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

Then he tells them that the scripture is being fulfilled in their presence. Make no mistake, Jesus is making a not-so-subtle claim that he is in fact the promised Messiah.

Matthew tells us here that they were astonished and they ask, "Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works?" I think that's actually the correct question, because the answer is pretty obvious: the authority with which he speaks and the power with which he does his works really can only have one source, and that's a divine source. It strikes me that they in fact recognized, at least in part, one of the most difficult truths of the gospel: that Jesus was a man born of a woman, had a family—brothers and sisters, technically half-brothers and half-sisters because their father was Joseph, right?—yet at the same time, divine. They recognized this truth at some level; they recognized that there was something special here—the dual nature of Christ as fully God and fully man.

Matthew tells us sadly, however, this astonishment did not lead to wonder, but to offense. Rather than being drawn, they were put off. So they saw and heard the right thing, but somehow came to the completely opposite conclusion. It's almost difficult for me to connect these dots, to see what they saw and to come to an offense—to be offended by what it was that Jesus had done and said.

Yet, if we think about it, they're not the first. The Pharisees heard the truth that Jesus preached and felt their position of power being threatened. The rich young ruler heard what Jesus had to say and felt that his wealth was being threatened. For some, Jesus' unwillingness to commit to overthrowing Roman rule, and instead talking about this kingdom that existed instead in the hearts and minds of people, made him difficult to follow.

But what exactly caused the offense here? Seems like the local kid that made it big would almost be a source of pride. Yet again, not pride, but offense. There's a verse in Isaiah that's only a couple of chapters away from where Jesus was preaching, in Isaiah chapter 8, that says this:

And he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

The issue then is not one of comprehension—they understood. The issue is a spiritual one. There's a sense here in which the gospel demands a response. It demands us to relinquish our control, our hopes, our view of the world, and our dreams for the promise of something greater than we can ask or imagine. We heard this last week with the parable of the treasure in the field and the pearl of great price: the one searching for those things, in order to find it, had to sell all they had in order to gain that treasure.

Somehow the Nazarenes' path of stumbling and offense passes through the rock of their familiarity with Jesus. How could this kid, the one we saw grow up, possibly be the promised one? It was this context of proximity that somehow distorted their astonishment into offense.

Steven's talked to us a lot recently about the number of young adults in our country who grew up in the church and are going through a period of deconstruction. They are questioning the things that they were taught and are trying to synthesize what they see in the world with the things that they were taught and grew up with in the church. Some of this I think is healthy. They're asking the church to produce something more authentic, rather than a gospel of just sin management, or one that demands a public life of purity while ignoring what's going on behind closed doors. They see a church that speaks loudly about the right to life, but is too often largely silent about the life to which the poor and the immigrant are relegated. They see that neither the kingdom promised by Christian nationalism on one side, or a kingdom of liberal acceptance and tolerance on the other, reflects the kingdom that Jesus calls us to. They've seen one celebrity pastor after another fall in disgrace. They too often saw a church unwilling or unable to openly wrestle with the difficult realities of suffering in the life of a believer or injustice in the community around them. It becomes the source of their offense.

It was their proximity that made it difficult for them to step back and see beyond the imperfect and sinful representatives, whether it be their parents or their leaders, to see the promises of the gospel, to see what God had promised for his bride. My point here is that this problem is not an ancient one, but a timeless one, a human one.

The enemy's primary weapon is to distort. To Adam and Eve, he said, "Eat the apple and you'll know good from evil. You'll be like God. Eat the apple." To Jesus, he said, "Declare your allegiance to me and I'll give you all the kingdoms of the earth." To us, he says, "God has no answer for your suffering. Give up. You're on your own." Or he says, "God just wants to derail your dreams."

The distortion comes as we allow the context to narrow to see it only through our own immediate experience, our own suffering, our own desires, and to fail to acknowledge the promises of God that in this world you will have tribulation. But take heart, I have overcome the world.

One more thing before we move on here. I think it is in this contextual distortion where cults and theological errors too often find their footing. Sometimes it's well-meaning. In the second and third centuries of the early church, they were wrestling with some difficult concepts presented by the gospel. One of those was this idea of the nature of God as existing as one God—which was important—but somehow there's this Father, Son, Holy Spirit thing, and they're trying to figure out how to make this work. They didn't have words for it; they're trying to figure this out. So, one of the solutions that was come up with is an idea of what's become known as the heresy of modalism, that says there's really only one God, he just appears from time to time in one of these three different modes. So he sort of shapeshifts depending on the context, depending on the situation. He'll appear as God the Father here, but over here as the Son, and then over here as the Spirit, and he just sort of shapeshifts. It's their way of trying to figure out how to make these two things work together.

I believe they were well-intentioned. Nobody woke up one day and said, "You know what? Today on my list, I'm going to create a heresy." Nobody does that. But it denies the three persons that exist within the Trinity: one God, three persons. In an attempt to explain something difficult, it diminishes God as one who can't possibly exist as three and one at the same time. Admittedly, it is not the easiest doctrinal concept and leaves us, even today, existing in this area of mystery. But the truth is that a god without some mystery isn't fundamentally much of a god.

Sometimes these errors can even be more nefarious. Jim Bakker, whose Fort Mill PTL empire crumbled years ago because of deception and fraud, is now out of prison and back at his old tricks. He is selling survival gear and warfare water bottles. He cultivates and capitalizes on a fear that he's creating that the world's about to end, and that Christians are imminently going to go through some horrible tribulation. He's also selling condos in Missouri, because for some reason known only to him, the best place to survive an apocalypse is a condo in Missouri.

Maybe there's some tiny seeds of truth in some of what these hucksters are offering and peddling, but their primary strategy is to narrow the context, to limit a perspective, then to create doubt and fear and provide a different solution. Bakker's not the first; he won't be the last. Paul takes on a group of Thessalonians who were so convinced that Jesus was about to come back that they quit their jobs, climbed to the top of the mountain, and were just waiting there, letting the rest of the church bring them food and take care of them, and he takes them to task.

Other believers through the centuries were asked to see colonization, relocation, and re-education of native people as an honorable mission; to see slavery as not only acceptable, but good; to sign on with the Nazi party in order to save Germany. The list goes on and on. They all attempt to narrow the context to create fear and doubt and justify a self-serving solution. Again, it's not an ancient problem, but a human one. We can all be prone to allowing our fears and our own needs to narrow our context, distort the gospel, and find it as insufficient.

While this is problematic, what Jesus addresses next can be even more concerning. Picking up the second half of verse 57:

But Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household." And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.

There's a person I went to high school with, his name is Rob. He was a couple of years behind me. I didn't know him well. I didn't really like him or the crew he ran with; they were kind of delinquents and bullies in my book. But somewhere along the way, the Lord got a hold of Rob. He's become not only a follower of Jesus, but also a Hebrew and Old Testament scholar of some repute, studying all over the world, speaking at conferences, and writing papers. His primary presence is online, and he faithfully preaches the gospel and its real-life ramifications in politics and other social issues. Rob can challenge the status quo and traditional thinking in a way that I have come to appreciate.

More than once I have seen Rob engage online with a classmate who challenges him and says, "You have no right to say these things. You mistreated me. You bullied me in school." I've admired Rob's willingness to admit and own that as a young man, he wasn't who he now wishes he would have been. He graciously apologizes and communicates that his faith is one that is transformative and hopeful. The context for this other person makes it difficult for him to see the message that Rob represents. I see this as a bit of a modern reflection of this same proverb that Jesus said, where "a prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household." I don't want to overstate the similarities here—Rob's historical sin was real; Jesus', not so much, right?

For any of us who have moved away and returned home, who have parents or siblings or cousins or classmates, it can be a challenge to move beyond the box in which you were placed. The point is that even Jesus had this challenge. The perfect Son of God, the true Messiah, was challenged to move beyond the box into which his own community had placed him.

Verse 57 left us off with the Nazarenes being offended at his message. Verse 58 has us with Jesus leaving Nazareth because of their unbelief. Offense, skepticism, and deconstruction, if left unchecked—if there is a failure to step back and recontextualize—can often lead to full-blown unbelief.

One of the questions we ask every time I'm up here is: whose shoes are we to place our feet in in the story? The only place we often put ourselves in the story is in Jesus' shoes—as those who have been rejected by a community because of our message, who for whatever reason have taken offense to it. The message of Jesus is a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense; then we will often find ourselves rejected by the world, providing no real answers. I think it is appropriate for us as we read this text—being the body of Christ, the keeper of his word and truth, and acknowledging the reality of a world that we live in that we are called to be in but not of.

I think there's another layer here to Jesus' warning: that we should also put our feet in the shoes of the Nazarenes, to be aware that we too are prone to allow our context to narrow our view of God and create a distortion of events—that God doesn't know, or God doesn't care, God doesn't hear, God doesn't answer; that we need to find or unlock some sort of magic answer, that we just need to try harder, rather than stepping back and allowing the gospel in its fullest sense to wash over us and broaden our perspective. If we don't do this, we can allow our offense to slowly harden and set into unbelief.

Three Takeaways

Thought about what we might take away from this today. Let me encourage you to hear from the Holy Spirit, not from me necessarily. It's not my job; I'm unqualified to be the Holy Spirit. But as I thought through this, there are a couple ideas that I think might be a jumping-off point as we engage with this and wonder where we take it as we leave here today.

1. Cultivate Wonder

The first takeaway I'm calling "cultivate wonder." This is an exercise in broadening our context. Read the scripture about the character of God. Sing of his greatness and goodness. Hike to the top of a mountain and see his fingerprints. Visit the beach and just pause for a minute and appreciate what God has wrought. Pause over your children and the wonder of seeing the best parts of you and your spouse and the dreams and potential they have. God is bigger than all we can ask or imagine. So intentionally sit in that and appreciate that he's bigger.

2. Practice Thankfulness

The second takeaway I'm suggesting is to "practice thankfulness." This has a way of shrinking our own issues. I think when we see the suffering all around us, the magnitude of need around us, the faithfulness of God who's met our needs through the years, and to be intentionally thankful for the work that God is doing in our lives.

3. Rehearse the Gospel

The third takeaway I'm calling "rehearse the gospel." While the gospel provides a solution to sin and a hope for tomorrow, we remain in our current situation where things are still broken—a place where sovereignty and suffering still coexist in a way that God doesn't seem to find troubling, certainly not as troubling as we do. We need to allow for mystery, to preach the truth to ourselves.

Part of what I'm suggesting here is not just the simplified version of the gospel ("God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life"), but the bigger part of the gospel: to understand that God has been at work for thousands of years, that your name is in the Lamb's book of life, that he has steps prepared for you to walk in, the concepts of adoption and justification. So not only rehearse the gospel, but expand your understanding of the gospel, and then allow the Holy Spirit to color our thoughts and protect our hearts.

I want to finish with one more story. It was only a few years ago where five families were meeting in a co-working space on Sunday evenings, believing that God had something for us, that he was calling us to something bigger. In what could have been seen by many as hopeless, these five families embarked on a journey under the prophetic banner of One Hope Community Church. We met and prayed for a year, and then God crossed our paths with this family that God had been doing a parallel work in their lives and had called him to church planting. And so God crossed our paths with Stephen and the Borders.

We prayed for another year, and the YMCA opened up. There's been one church in here for almost 20 years, and at the time we were looking for a new place to meet, the YMCA for the first time in 20 years opens up, and they selected us to meet here. Six families for another year, and then God started to bring you all, one family at a time—people we did not know, but God did. And he created this mosaic of people journeying through life together, supporting one another through job struggles, health issues, family losses.

God is still in the business of miracles, of wisdom, and mighty works, and you and One Hope are fingerprints of his faithfulness. Pray with me.