“Hot Sauce Gospel”
Third Sunday after
the Epiphany -- January 27, 2002
Isaiah 9:1-4, Psalm
27, Matthew 4:12-23
Rev. Joe Ellwanger is the pastor of a Lutheran Church in Milwaukee. An older Caucasian man, he is one of the pioneers of the church-based community organization there called MICAH, a sister organization of MAC and a respected leader in the Gamaliel Network. Joe and I were chatting once, doing a 1 on 1 we call it – and I tell you in this organizing work you meet the most fascinating people -- and he told me about the time he was a young pastor in Birmingham, Alabama in the sixties and Martin Luther King came to town. I made the mistake of asking him whether he was one of those that Dr. King scolded in his Letter from Birmingham Jail. You remember, how Dr. King scolded the liberal white clergy who advised him to be patient. He bristled. On the contrary, he said, he marched with King and was in jail with King. What motivated you to do all that, Joe, I asked when he had cooled down a bit. I mean, couldn’t you have quietly pastored your church and not got yourself in such trouble? It’s the gospel, man, he said, pouring hot sauce over his burrito. The gospel is hot sauce. A young, white brother – and there were many others like him who knew that their salvation was intertwined with the salvation of their black sisters and brothers. After all these years, Joe is still in the midst of the struggle for God’s reign, understanding that struggle to be his call to discipleship now a respected veteran to those of us who’ve come later.
As those Civil Rights Sixties slip away into memory we rarely hear of church leaders being arrested in the U.S. for offending Law and Order. In those days the clergy wore arrest and trial as badges of honor in the defense of civil rights. Sadly, these days when you hear of clergy or church leaders being arrested it is in scandalous cases of embezzlement of church funds or charges of sexual abuse. So it is a refreshing wind that blows now when we hear of church leaders being arrested in the cause of discipleship -- for the crime of the gospel.
Early in the morning of January 18th, the Israeli military broke through the doors from the playground to the Arab Evangelical School in Ramallah, of the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem, searched the classrooms and offices and ordered the school's director, Samira Nasser, to go home. They arrested the Rev. George Al Kopti, rector to St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Ramallah, and Sister Najah Rantisi, of the Evangelical Home, and threatened both verbally and with weapons. Their crime: housing nineteen Palestinian children, aged three to seventeen at the school.
Not too long ago, the History Channel had a show called "Crossing the Bridge", the story of the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, in March of 1965. It was interesting to see in that march, people like my friend Joe Ellwanger and others in clerical collars. Joe had told me about the march. That’s where Lutherans, Episcopalians, Baptists and Methodists first learned that we could actually do something together! So many law enforcement officers in those days were church people that it would have seemed wise to wear their religion around their necks. But that didn’t keep many church leaders being shot to death at that time. Jim Reeb, a Unitarian minister who was shot to death for integrating a café one morning and Jon Daniels, an Episcopal seminarian, joined Methodist and Baptist boys in martyrdom all because they believed that this was their calling for the sake of the gospel. That’s the “hot sauce” gospel, man, said Joe, pouring more on his burrito.
You know, the word "gospel"
has lost some of its hotness somewhere along the way, but when Mark first used
it and Mathew took it up so long ago it has had a stinger in its tail, which
has not been entirely pulled. The word means "proclamation of good
news" and it was a word in use when our Greek Scriptures were written, but
not in church use. It was not a
religious word, as it is now. It was a
word used by the government, to announce imperial proclamations--we now call
them "presidential proclamations" or "executive orders."
This is another of those instances when the gospel writers deliberately took a
secular word and gave it new meaning.
It was a revolutionary proclamation, done in political language. The
word 'gospel' was to them as political a word as; say "inauguration"
is to us. And "inauguration" is perhaps a good equivalent for us,
because it implies something new but as yet untried, full of hope but dependent
upon the character of the one being inaugurated. When the word was first used
it was “hot sauce” but over the years, it has become bland and lukewarm.
Matthew, in the NRSV translation, says that when John was arrested Jesus "withdrew" to Galilee. I think that’s a wrong word. That sounds like Jesus got scared and went into hiding. Other translations say, "he set out for Galilee" or "went back to Galilee." These miss the “hot sauce” of the fact that he went into hostile territory when he 'went back to Galilee.' Galilee was the area governed by Herod Antipas who had just arrested John, because John dared to question his public and private morality and later would have him executed. Jesus was 'upping the ante.' Why did Jesus go there of all places? Matthew says he went there because it was the place that was most in darkness. " The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light—the land across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles--those who sat in death's shadow--there it is that the light has dawned."
No! Jesus was not going to be intimidated by John’s arrest. Jesus went right into Galilee – to upper Galilee, known as the “Galilee of the Gentiles.” He went there to bring the gospel of God to people different from himself. There were few synagogues up there in 'Galilee of the Gentiles.' “Can anything good come out of Galilee?” was a common saying among people. Some folks up there even kept pig farms -- remember the story of the Gadarene demoniac in the graveyard? The living gospel, not just the talking gospel, is the gospel that engages the stranger, that embraces the alien, the foreigner, the different, whose language and culture, diet and dress, likes and dislikes, may all be odd--but they are the ones whose aspirations for freedom and dignity and expression and delight and food and shelter, work and play, are all at heart the same. Jesus went to Galilee. Like how we might go to Englewood which is still one of the more depressed communities in our neighborhood, or to Bridgeview where a large number of Muslims live, or uptown where immigrants, particularly refugees flock. The message begins amongst those outside the mainstream, those in the margins, in Galilee, because Jesus knows that's a good place to start. From there he would build a base from which he would come down to Jerusalem, the center of religious and political power. But he needed to begin there. Those in the margins are more likely to listen than are people who think they know all the answers already.
And his message is clear and succinct: “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven has come near.”
Last Sunday after our spirited celebration of Martin Luther King’s life and legacy, I took my son Devaka to the airport to fly back to North Carolina. As some of you know, he wants to go to Divinity School for graduate work. He asked me a very interesting question. “When we sang words like, “Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,” how can a person like me relate to that, he asked. I’ve never in my life had a stony road, or faced a bitter chastening rod. I’ve always lived a privileged life. So, how can I sing those words with meaning?” We’ve a budding theologian here, you see. That’s the kind of question that theologians ask.
On the spur of the moment, weaving
in and out of traffic on Garfield Blvd. I couldn’t think of a good answer to
the question. But it is that question, as I later considered it, that reminded
me of my friend Joe. What motivates a young white boy from Minnesota to go to
seminary and seek a pastorate in Birmingham, if not for the hot sauce of the
gospel? He did not have to walk a stony road or to face a bitter chastening
rod. But he moved to Birmingham. What happened? Now, he didn’t tell this to me
in these precise words, but he might very well have said it was as a result of
his repentance. Repentance, as you know, is a terribly misunderstood word. For
one thing: it is not the same as confession – or the admission of wrong doing.
There was a cartoon in which little George Washington is standing with an axe in his hand. Before him lying on the ground is the famous cherry tree. He has already made his smug admission that he did it -- after all, he "cannot tell a lie." But his father is standing there exasperated saying, "All right, so you admit it! You always admit it! The question is, when are you going to stop doing it!”
Repentance, metanoia, in Greek is really about a 180 degree turn. This is the hot sauce factor, you see. You are going this way, and you turn and go the other way. It is not just about confessing a sin; it is about a complete change in lifestyle. But I told you Devaka’s story, to illustrate another aspect of repentance that we have not yet talked about. Repentance is a re-rooting – a theological re-rooting.
Kosuke Koyama is one of my favorite theologians. Originally from Japan and now teaching at Union Theological Seminary in New York, he served in Thailand for a long time as a missionary. At that time wrote his Water Buffalo Theology about telling the story of the gospel in language that Thai paddy farmers whose lives revolve around monsoons and water buffalos. Re-rooting is a process of paddy cultivation. Paddy is first sown in a nursery. Once the rice paddy plants come up, they are uprooted and replanted in a specially prepared field. Koyama thinks of theological re-rooting as a conversion beyond conversion. The Christian’s mind, he says must be re-rooted in the mind of Christ, and that is a crucified mind. “Let this mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” You remember that grand hymn of the early church from Phil. 2:5.
He bases his re-rooting theology on the work of a previous Japanese Theologian, Kazoh Kitamori, who in 1945, shortly after the World War II ended, with disastrous tragedy in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, wrote a very important book called the “Theology of the Pain of God.” You never thought about God as being in pain, did you? Kitamori pointed out how in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the people’s pain was God’s pain. This is, of course, because of the immensity of God’s love. God’s love is so great said, Kitamori that when people suffer God suffers. When people get sick, when people lose jobs, when tragedies like Sept 11 occur, when the road is stony and the chastening rod is bitter, God’s heart of immense love is broken for the suffering of God’s people and God is in pain.
Koyama then points us to the theological re-rooting in the heart of God. This we do through repentance – a complete turning around. Repentance is re-rooting ourselves in a crucified mind – re-rooting itself in God’s pain. And when you do that you can experience in your heart the pain and the suffering others go through, you can just about feel it. It becomes your pain -- your injustice. And even though you may not be your physical problem, it becomes your spiritual problem. This is what motivated Joe Ellwanger to seek a pastorate in Birmingham in the turbulent decade of the sixties, even though he could have stayed in Minnesota. This is what would motivate Devaka to relate to the “stony road and the chastening rod” even though they were not in his personal life experience.
If a part of repentance is having a crucified mind, and having ourselves re-rooted in the crucified mind of God, amazing things can happen. Joe Ellwanger would be marching with Martin King. Young men like Devaka, would be asking important questions like how do I step into the shoes of those who’ve walked on stony roads and been beaten by the chastening rods.
Tomorrow, groups of people, totaling over 100 will converge on Springfield from Chicago, Joliet, Rockford, Quad Cities, Champaign, Springfield and East St. Louis to demand that the formula for funding schools be changed. They will do that because they can step into the mind of children and teachers who know that children in Chicago and southern suburbs can’t compete on an equal playing field for professions when they don’t have the resources – enough teachers, decent buildings, lab equipment and computers and programs like music. The disparity was so evident yesterday, when we went to see Amali play in the Allstate Orchestra. Chicago Public Schools cannot afford to have music programs in the schools, where as schools from the northern and western suburbs have incredibly well-heeled programs. Everybody who will go tomorrow, don’t go because they have children in public schools. But they will go because they have the crucified mind. They can step into the shoes of children and parents and teachers and know that this is a matter of God’s reign. Repent, Jesus said, for God’s reign would come: one turned around crucified mind at a time. Now we are really talking about hot sauce.
As Jesus was walking along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, he "saw" two fishermen, Simon and Andrew, who were brothers. He said to them, "Follow me and I will make you fish for people." They immediately dropped all that they were doing and left with him. And then Jesus saw two more brothers and called them. And they, too, responded quickly and abruptly.. Simon and Andrew left their boats to follow Christ. James and John literally left their father Zebedee sitting in the boat to finish the day's work.
Jesus called out to very ordinary people like fishermen, tax collectors and rebels. He found them mostly in the margins – in upper Galilee, the Galilee of the Gentiles. There they began a journey of discipleship, that led them through a sermon on the Mount, numerous other teachings, healings, confronting the powers, both religious and political powers, until the final showdown at Calvary.
These people had no idea what they were getting into when they left their boats and their father. They had no idea that they were going repent, to turn their life around, to learn how to re-root their theology and their lifestyle. They had no idea that, that re-rooting would propel them to a such an incredible showdown with the powers, that their rabbi himself would be crucified, that they would be scattered, but on Easter a tremendous victory would be won, inaugurating the promised reign of God. They had the ride of their life. That’s hot-sauce discipleship.
Jesus calls us, each one. Everyone may not be called to march with Dr. King, or to demonstrate in Springfield. But everyone is called to repentance – to re-rooting our theology in God’s pain. And God’s pain is rooted in people’s pain, because God’s pain is rooted in God’s love for everyone. And from that vantage point, from that place of God’s pain we need to look at our life, and where God is leading – see that disparity and there will be a disparity and turn our life around.
I hope you will not settle for a bland sauce on your burrito. As Joe would have said, “The gospel is hot sauce, man!”