Transformation (Not Perfection)

As promised, I want to start this post with the story of how I ended up crafting an argument against recycling. My argument boiled down to the idea that consumer-level recycling, at least in its iteration almost 15 years ago, cost more environmentally than it saved. Meaning that the effort put into recycling by an individual did not have an efficient enough infrastructure to be a net benefit. On the corporate scale? Absolutely. But that wasn’t my argument. I conducted interviews around the school to get opinions on the environmental benefits of recycling, then compared these to the data that showed that the benefits students and staff liked about recycling were not being realized in practice. The interviews were carefully conducted not to show that anyone thought recycling was bad, rather to show that people thought recycling was working better than it was. In our Scripture passage, John is crafting an argument in a similar manner. John reveals his argument plainly and quickly - that Jesus is the Messiah. All four gospels are written in such a way that they craft a specific argument. Matthew is arguing that Jesus is the Messiah that the Jews have been waiting for. Mark is arguing both that Jesus is the Son of God and the Son of Man. Luke is arguing that Jesus has come to save everyone, not just the Jews. These arguments may not be immediately obvious in these (synoptic) gospels because they more or less tell the same story. This is largely due to each author drawing upon the same sources. Matthew and Luke, in fact, were written with the gospel of Mark as a source. But there are a few key differences that show us how these arguments are made. Remember Jesus’ sermon on the mount? In Matthew, Jesus talks about those who are blessed, like the peacemakers, the righteousness seekers, and the merciful. This would have particularly struck a chord with Matthew’s Jewish audience who were very pious and no strangers to persecution. The same sermon is outlined in Luke. Except in Luke’s account, the sermon is on a plain, not a mount. Jesus is physically lower, speaking to an audience that would have been socially lower as well. Jesus echoes similar blessings to those in Matthew’s account, but focuses more on social justice and the poor. Now, it’s likely that Jesus preached for a lot longer than either of these accounts record, but it is telling to see what parts of Jesus’ sermon Matthew and Luke each focus on. They know that their audiences are different and their arguments are different. Is there any less truth in either account? Not at all! We have no reason to believe that both accounts were not accurately depicting the words of Christ. In fact, we believe that both accounts are divinely inspired, meaning they were written in prayer and miraculously reveal to us in a cohesive manner the nature of God even thousands of years after these accounts were written. These differences, the righteousness of Matthew, the social justice orientation of Luke, the brevity of Mark, and the Divine proclamation of John all serve to share the good news: that through faith in Jesus, we will be delivered from suffering. Knowing this, we are called to do all we can to help ease the suffering of others, and to share the Gospel (or 4!) with them.

Click here to watch this week’s sermon.