Treasure in Clay Jars
Luke 7:18-23, 2 Cor 4:7-12
May 8, 2022
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
Image: 6th century mosaic Transfiguration in Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Italy.
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpzplSQNYc8
The bulletin covers for this Eastertide season reflect some of the earliest surviving Christian art. You might recognize today’s image, because I have used it before. If you go into almost any Christian church today, you will find a cross or a crucifix. It may be large, even life-size, mounted on a wall or suspended. It may be smaller, like the one that rests on our communion table. In many churches, you will find more than one cross. You probably expect to find it there. It might even surprise you to know that it wasn’t always like that. For the first thousand years of Christianity, the evidence is that the cross was largely absent from church art and architecture. The focus was not on the death of Jesus, but on his resurrection. They believed that the resurrection had re-opened Paradise on earth, returning the world to the beauty in which it was first created. Paradise was to be found on this earth, permeated and blessed by the Spirit of God.[1]
That is the finding of two clergywomen, Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, who studied sanctuaries of the oldest existing church buildings, dating from the fourth and fifth centuries, and the writings of the theologians and church leaders from that same time period. Their description and interpretation of some significant pieces of art will be on the front and back panels of the bulletin each week.
I was reminded of their research at the Alliance of Baptists gathering two weeks ago. Rita Nakashima Brock was one of two excellent keynote speakers. She delivered a lot of insightful content very quickly in each of her presentations. In one presentation, she fired off a list of 8 assumptions that underpin how people understand the cross and why she doesn’t share those assumptions. I couldn’t write fast enough to get them all into my notes, but I got some of them.
One in particular came to mind as I looked at the two readings for today. Dr. Nakashima Brock said that there is an assumption that evil must be overcome and ended in order for good to flourish. Evil must be overcome and ended before good can flourish. She pointed out that the serpent was in the garden from the beginning when God pronounced it good.
That’s the starting point of today’s sermon – Good can flourish, even in the presence of evil. Here’s a hint: I’m going to end the sermon where I begin, so if you want to tune out, now would be the time.
The first contact that Luke describes between John the Baptist and Jesus happens in today’s reading. Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that John baptized Jesus, so this can’t be first contact. And you might be right. But it is the first contact that Luke describes. Luke indicates that John was baptizing people and he indicates that Jesus was baptized, but he never explicitly says that John baptized John. It is only implied. And he tells us that Herod Antipas put John in prison, before he mentions that Jesus was baptized. So, he doesn’t necessarily tell the story in chronological order.
Here's why that might matter – if the story is being told out of chronological order, then this encounter with John’s disciples might have happened before the baptism. John’s whole life seems to have been spent preparing the way for the Messiah. And this incident might represent John’s hopeful exploration of possibility. “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”
John’s ministry style was fire and brimstone preaching with a side helping of political protest. Jesus’ style was different. His approach was raising awareness with his teachings and providing direct services with his healings. There was a political edge to Jesus’ work, but at the beginning, it was more low key than John’s. As the word spread about Jesus, John may have wondered whether Jesus just might be the Messiah, but he seems to have expected the Messiah to be more like an old-time fiery prophet.
Jesus tells John’s disciples to tell John what they see and hear. One scholar writes, “That will mean, first and foremost, that they must take in the suffering around them. They must stop and see the pain on their neighbors’ faces; they must make time to hear the hard stories of strangers. In the process, they will see the hope that is born in someone who is given a second chance: a chance to walk, a chance to see, a chance to live in community after long years of isolation, a chance to live again.” [2]
Jesus says to tell John about many kinds of healings and to tell John that the poor have good news preached to them. John may recognize an allusion to Isaiah 61 which lists several prophetic tasks. If he is in prison, he will notice what Jesus has omitted, because Isaiah 61 includes “release to the prisoners”. He may receive the message that Jesus isn’t coming to spring him from jail.
John will have to listen to what is reported back to him and evaluate whether or not it provides evidence that Jesus is the Messiah. And in the process, he may have to revise what he thinks the Messiah is. That is probably why Jesus says “Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”
Jesus may be the One, the One John was hoping for, but he is something different than the Messiah John was expecting. Blessed is John if he can accept Jesus as Jesus is.
Baptist scholar Alan Culpepper says that we often share John’s experience. “We think we know who Jesus is, what he is doing and what he stands for, and then we are forced by experience to revise our understandings: are you the one, or should we look for another?”[3]
When Jesus doesn’t meet our expectations, we may revise our understandings. But sometimes, we do take offense. We reject a new understanding, we cling to expectations that are not completely true but somehow seem more comfortable. When Jesus doesn’t meet our expectations, we may believe that evil has won. We may give in to despair.
If we are tempted to doubt the power of resurrection, if we are feeling that evil keeps rearing its head, even in ways that we thought were long resolved, then let us remember Jesus’ words to John and look for the places of healing, the places where the poor find good news. Let us remember Dr. Brock’s assertion that good can flourish even in the midst of evil.
I heard a story from Mariupol this week. A person came out from a bomb shelter and immediately saw an empty car with keys in the ignition. He watched the car for 2 hours, but the owner never appeared. So he loaded his family in and drove them to relatives in a safer area of Ukraine. In the glove box, he found the owner’s phone number. He called the owner and said, “Sorry I stole your car. I saved my family.”
The owner said, “Thank God. Don’t worry. I have 4 cars. I took my family out. The rest of the cars I left filled with fuel in different places with the keys in the ignition and my phone number in the glove box. I received calls back from all the cars. There will be peace. Take care of yourself.”
The evil in Ukraine is monstrous. It is happening on a scale that I can’t fathom. But every day, I hear stories of courage and kindness, of people risking themselves for others. Good can flourish even in the midst of evil.
Writing to the church in Corinth, Paul lists a number of difficulties that he has faced, including beatings, imprisonment, sleepless nights, riots and hunger. Sometimes, we think we know who Jesus is, what he is doing and what he stands for, and then we are forced by experience to revise our understandings. When our experiences don’t meet our expectations, we may believe that evil has won.
But Paul says “we have this treasure in earthen vessels.” We carry the power of God within our frail, human existence. We might be oppressed, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; knocked down, but not destroyed.
There is a big difference between being down, which we will certainly be, and being out, which Paul assures us we will not be. We find strength in the power unleashed on the world in the resurrection of Jesus.
When we look for Messiah, Jesus points us to acts of healing and wholeness, to good news for the poor, to second chances for those who desperately need them. Our lives may be easier, more convenient and involve less suffering when they are shallow and unconnected, when we do not allow ourselves to be touched by the pain and death of others.[4] But we follow the One who entered our world and suffered with and for us.
John Lewis’s memoir is titled Walking With the Wind. The title comes from an incident in his childhood when lovely summer day turned into a fierce storm.
"About fifteen of us children were outside my aunt Seneva’s house, playing in her dirt yard,” he wrote. Aunt Seneva gathered them inside the little shotgun house. Their laughter and play had given way to quiet terror. The wind howled, the rains pounded, and the house began to shake, then to sway, and the wooden floor boards upon which they stood began to bend.
“And then,” he wrote, “a corner of the room started lifting up…This storm was actually pulling the house toward the sky” with all of them inside.
Aunt Seneva instructed the kids line up and hold hands and to walk together toward the corner of the room
that was rising. Back and forth they went from the kitchen to the front, “walking with the wind, holding that trembling house down with the weight of [their] small bodies.”
Lewis reflects, “More than half a century has passed since that day, and it has struck me more than once over those many years that our society is not unlike the children in that house, rocked again and again by the winds of one storm or another, the walls around us seeming at times as if they might fly apart.”
“It seemed that way in the 1960s, at the height of the civil rights movement, when America itself felt as if it might burst at the seams—so much tension, so many storms. But the people of conscience never left the house. They never ran away. They stayed, they came together and they did the best they could, clasping hands and moving toward the corner of the house that was the weakest. And then another corner would lift, and we would go there.”
He continues, “And eventually, inevitably, the storm would settle, and the house would still stand. But we knew another storm would come, and we would have to do it all over again. And we did. And we still do, all of us. You and I.
Children holding hands, walking with the wind. . . . "[5]
Beloved ones, this is the spiritual reality on which we stake our lives – God is in Christ, restoring Paradise and reconciling the world. We have this treasure, the extraordinary power of God, in earthen vessels. Even in the face of persistent evil, good flourishes as we walk with the Spirit. Thanks be to God.
[1] Rita Nakashima Brock, Rebecca Ann Parker, Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire, (Boston: Beacon Press, 2008), p. xv
[2] Margaret Lamotte Torrence in Feasting on the Gospels, Luke, Volume 1, Cynthia Jarvis and E. Elizabeth Johnson, editors, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2014) p. 196
[3] Alan Culpepper, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), p. 162
[4] Mitzi Minor, 2 Corinthians: Smyth and Helwys Bible Commentary, (Macon, GA: Smyth and Helwys, 2009), p. 101.
[5](John Lewis, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), pp. xvi–xvii