Lectionary 12; June 22, 2008; Bethel Lutheran Church, Rochester.
Matthew 10:24-39.

Dear Friends in Christ, Grace to you and Peace, from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. AMEN.


The award winning movie from a few years back The Shawshank Redemption is about fear. In fact, posters promoting the film carried these words: “Fear can hold you prisoner, Hope can set you free.”
Take the character Brooks Hatlen, played by actor James Whitmore. Here is how one character described Hatlen in the film: “The man’s been in here fifty years, Heywood, fifty years. This is all he knows. In here, he’s an important man, he’s an educated man. Outside he’s nothin’--just a used up con with arthritis in both hands. Probably couldn’t get a library card if he tried . . . these walls are funny. First you hate ’em, then you get used to ’em. Enough time passes, it gets so you depend on ’em. That’s ‘institutionalized’ . . . They send you here for life and that’s exactly what they take, the part that counts anyway.”
The truth of this comes home when Hatlen is finally released. He discovers that he can’t enjoy it at all. He’s grown accustomed to life within the constraints of a prison where he didn’t have to make his own decisions. Someone else did the thinking for him, and now, on the outside, he faces a prospect more daunting and terrifying than incarceration: freedom. This newfound freedom scares Brooks so much that he contemplates various ways of breaking his parole in order to return to the security of his prison cell. “Maybe I should rob the FoodWay,” he says on one occasion, “so they’ll send me home.”

What we expect to be true for this man isn’t true. Freedom isn’t living on the outside. Freedom is the security of being locked up.

In the same way, Dr. James R. Driscoll tells about a middle aged woman some years back, living in a small southern town who became desperately frightened. She was morbidly afraid that burglars would break into her home. Maybe she saw too much violence on TV, or too many local news reports. Maybe there were rumors of break ins around town, or maybe a home on her street had been burglarized.
In any case, her fear mushroomed . . . to the point of paranoia. She pleaded with her husband until he gave in and, hoping to ease her mind, agreed to putting heavy bars on all of the windows and doors.
She was still frightened, so she talked her husband into adding additional strands of steel across the window bars . . . thus making it almost impossible for anyone to gain entry into the house. Only now, when she was virtually sealed off from the outside world, did she feel safer and more secure.
But, one afternoon, tragedy struck. As she was taking a nap, her house caught fire. When she awoke, she discovered that she was trapped. Her husband, the fire department, the police, the neighbors, the rescue squad . . . everyone worked frantically to get into the house to get her out . . . but to no avail. They could not remove the heavy bars in time. And, tragically, the woman lost her life.

This woman was trapped inside of her own home. The place where we should be most free was her place of seclusion. A place where we should feel safe was a place where she felt threatened.

There are a lot of opposites from which we learn truth. It was theologian Jürgen Moltmann who lifted up the principle of “revelation in the opposite.” Moltmann contended that God often revels God’s own self in a way that seems contrary to the end result. Thus, power is revealed in weakness. Life is revealed in death. Jesus is never more powerful than when he is perceived to be dying on a cross.

In the stories above we see freedom in imprisonment, and we see captivity within the security of one’s home. Strange.

But it is true that we only know a concept because we have experienced the opposite. We know what light is because we have experienced darkness. Will we know what darkness is in heaven where there is no need for an external light? We know what love is, because we have known hate. If love were a constant, would we even have a word for it? Does a baby in a womb know what cold is since it has been incubated at 98.6°? Does it know what warmth is? That baby only knows what “is” is. Do the concepts of cold and warmth, light and darkness become a reality to the baby only in the harsh circumstances of birth? No wonder babies cry upon being born!

Take note of the many opposites in the Gospel lesson for today: disciple and teacher, slave and master; covered and uncovered; secret and become known; dark and light; soul and body; you (human) and sparrows; acknowledge and deny; peace and sword; find and lose; lose and find.

Bishop Mark Hanson of the ELCA has said that one of the most important words in our theology is “and.” Saint and sinner. Law and gospel. Cross and resurrection. The disciples have been instructed by Jesus to look for the “and” in their ministry. They will see both ends of the spectrum. The world is not necessarily going to embrace their message. They are to serve in a world of opposites.

Hershey Park is an amusement park in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Among its ten roller coasters is an aggressive ride calling Lightning Racer. It is actually not one roller coaster, but two—Lightning and Thunder. They roll out of the loading shed together and up long, parallel, wooden inclines. Together they race down the back side of the 90-foot drop through loops, twists, and turns to the end. Sometimes Lightning wins, and sometimes Thunder wins. But inevitably, at some point in the ride, the two take separate tracks and disappear from one another for a short time, only to appear on a trajectory that looks like they will crash together. They start together and end together, but they are opposite sides of the same coin.

Our lives can be much like that. Even husbands and wives can come out of the chute together but then seem like they are on a collision course. Where there should be love there is unhappiness. Where there should be mutual support one finds criticism or indifference. Revelation in the opposite.

So what does all this mean for our faith? It means that we shouldn’t be surprised when we come to church and hear what seems to be contradictory messages. We shouldn’t be surprised when we hear that the demands of the law are that which finally drive us to the grace of the gospel. We shouldn’t be surprised when we Christians proclaim power in weakness. We shouldn’t be surprised when our faith declares victory over death, even life in death!

For if we try to find our lives, we will lose them; and if we lose our lives for Christ’s sake, we will find them. Make sense? Not much? But you begin to see the truth in its opposite. Can you begin to see hope in your despair? Joy in your sorrow? Faith in your doubt? Light in your darkness?

At one point you were drowned in baptism, killed so that you may have new life in Christ. It really doesn’t make much sense. Except for children of the Gospel. AMEN.