Rev. Kevin M. Pleas

Matthew 16:1-4

August 12, 2007

The Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test Jesus they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. He answered them, "When it is evening, you say, 'It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.' And in the morning, 'It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.' You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah." Then he left them and went away.

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I'm not sure exactly why, but our tradition has sometimes gone to great lengths to portray Jesus as "meek and mild." That seems especially true around Christmas, what with all those old favorite Christmas hymns. Certainly, there are many passages in the Bible that portray Jesus as gentle, loving, forgiving and welcoming of children. If those were to only passages you were ever exposed to, I suppose it would make sense to think that Jesus was pretty soft. If you take the gospel stories as a whole though, what you will find is that Jesus displays a full range of human emotions, some of which are decidedly not meek or mild. Take today's passage for example. When we hear Jesus referring to people as "an evil and adulterous generation," meek and mild is not what immediately comes to mind.

This is a fairly familiar story. A group of Temple authorities come to Jesus. They want to prove, to the simple country folks gathered around, that Jesus is a fraud; not who he says he is. They demand of Jesus that he show them all a sign from heaven. That might sound like a simple request considering that, according to Matthew, he has been performing signs right and left throughout his ministry. But in effect, what the authorities are asking is this: "We want you to prove, here and now, in a way that all of us can see and believe, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are in fact, you claim to be." This sounds a lot like the line given to King Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar. "Prove to me that you're divine. Change my water into wine. Come on King of the Jews."

Of course, the Pharisees and Sadducees are a little more subtle than that, but Jesus doesn't miss the point, and he becomes angry. He calls them an evil and adulterous generation. This isn't just name calling. He doesn't mean that they are being unfaithful to their wives. He means they are being unfaithful to God, and he refuses to stoop to their level. He refuses to put the power of God on display, as if his whole ministry was some kind of magic show.

"No sign will be given except the sign of Jonah," he says, which, Matthew wants us to understand, means that just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days, Jesus would spend three days in darkness before his resurrection. It's Matthew's way of saying that the resurrection is the sign and seal of Jesus ministry. The resurrection is exactly the sign the Pharisees and Sadducees are asking for. But because of the hardness of their hearts, even that is a sign they won't be able to understand or accept.

Now I have to say, apart from their belligerence, I do have some sympathy for these temple authorities. They may have wanted a sign because they believed Jesus was a fraud and they were trying to prove it. On the other hand, they may have been secretly hoping that Jesus actually was the messiah they'd been waiting for. They may truly have wanted him to overcome their doubts. That's understandable. I don't know too many people of faith who wouldn't love to have a clear demonstration of the power and glory of God, in a way that banishes all doubt for all time. But life doesn't seem to work that way, and neither does faith. Faith, as Paul says, "is the assurance of things hoped for, the substance of things not seen." If all of a sudden we did see, faith in the unseen would no longer be necessary, if you see what I mean.

No fear of that though. I can hardly imagine the full divinity of God being revealed in our lifetimes in a way that would banish the need for faith. The Bible certainly talks about it happening one of these fine days. In the meantime though, what we have are signs; hints of the divine; what one recent author called, "Godwinks." There are all kinds of signs in the world, but what exactly they mean is always open to discussion. In our story, Jesus says that we don't have any trouble interpreting some signs. "When it is evening, you say, 'it will be fair weather, for the sky is red.' And in the morning, 'it will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.'" Every time I read this passage, I wonder if it isn't the origin of the old saying, "red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning."

Jesus didn't make this up. He was simply quoting what was apparently a commonly held belief. But even here the signs aren't as clear as we might think. I understand that any good sailor would recognize this saying as an old wives tale. The color of the sky doesn't actually predict coming conditions, and it would be foolish to rely on it, especially if you're in a small boat on a large ocean. In reality, predicting the weather is a notoriously difficult task.

I once read a book about the development of the science of Chaos. It talks about how, in the early 60s, the scientist Edward Lorenz began modeling weather patterns on his computer. His research had an enormous impact on improving weather forecasting. "Computer modeling," the book says, "had indeed succeeded in changing the weather business from an art to a science. The European Center's assessments suggested the world saved billions of dollars each year from predictions that were statistically better than nothing. But beyond two or three days the world's best forecasts were speculative, and beyond six or seven they were worthless."

There's a funny example of the difficulty of weather forecasting that took place in India a few years back. In April of 1995, the newscaster on the main evening news show in New Delhi, India, made a startling announcement: "the weather has been canceled until further notice. It's all got too complicated to explain and we keep getting it wrong anyway." It was a logical move, given the trouble the new station had been having. The following Sunday a spokesman for the station published an explanation in the Times of India. It went like this:

"It's been an abnormal April with, quite literally, scorching sunshine one minute and bitter winds and rain the next. On Monday evening, our weatherman told viewers, quite literally, to keep their woolen underwear on, and next day the temperature was 102. On Tuesday, he promised more sunshine, and we had 4 inches of snow. He's a professional meteorologist, and when the death threats from viewers came in, he took it all very personally. He spent all Wednesday, quite literally, memorizing a long report and trying to explain the freak conditions using satellite pictures. But halfway through the evening broadcast he forgot what he was talking about and, quite literally, he couldn't go on. He just kept smiling nervously and adjusting his tie while repeating: 'if the snow cover over the Himalayas is sparse, it will surely lead to a good monsoon,' until he started to cry and eventually we, quite literally, faded him out. We haven't seen him since. We'll try him again next month though. It's always blazing hot every day in May, so he should be able to cope. But I'm not sure he will return. His granny was attacked by an irate farmer with a chainsaw. Quite literally."

I admit, in these days of global warming, that story isn't quite as funny as it used to be. The point though, is that despite our science, predicting the weather is far from a sure bet. If Jesus were talking to us today about signs from heaven, I suppose the message would be that we don't know how to read the signs of the times or the signs of the sky. We just don't know how to read signs period. But we certainly do want to. There are few things we want more than to be able to predict the future. We want to know what's coming. We have an enormous desire to take the uncertainty out of life, and we always have.

It's no surprise then, that much of our technology is aimed at doing just that, taking the uncertainty out of life. Heating and air-conditioning aim at keeping our environment predictably comfortable. Planes, trains and automobiles aim at taking the uncertainty out of travel. Our medical technology aims at taking the uncertainty out of how long and how well we will live. Of course, what we're coming to understand is that all these things have their unintended consequences: long delays at airports, bridges collapsing, increased energy consumption and the appearance of resistant viruses all demonstrate that uncertainty always seems to creep back in.

Mostly though, our technology has worked so well for so long that we come to assume it ought to work perfectly all the time and become frustrated when it doesn't. My daughter, Sarah, was once down with bad case of Mononucleosis. Mono is a virus. The main treatment, we discovered, is plenty of fluids and rest, which, in spite of our technology, isn't a lot different than the approach our ancestors would have taken. One day when Sarah was feeling particularly miserable, she said to me, "I can't believe they don't make a drug that will fix this." We're justifiably proud of our technology, but clearly, there are a lot of things it can't fix, at least not at present.

And so we have an insurance industry. Insurance is based on the assumption that we can't predict when any one thing will go wrong for any one of us, but we can make a prediction based on the entire population. It may be a small minority of people who are going to get into an accident, let's say, but we buy insurance to hedge against the possibility that we might just end up being one of those unlucky few. We buy life insurance, health insurance, medical, flight, theft. We can buy insurance for our houses, cars, boats, computers and cell phones. When you think about it, the list is just about endless. I seem to recall that Lloyd's of London once even insured Betty Grable's legs.

So, first of all, we want to control things. And second, when things get out of control, we want to be compensated. That's all pretty normal human behavior. The thing is though, as normal as it may be, the more we focus on control over or compensation for the bad things that may happen to us, the less likely we are to develop a trusting relationship with God. I remember a great line from Shakespeare's play, The Tempest. The play begins on a ship at sea during a storm. The storm gets worse and worse until the ship begins to break apart, at which point the mariners begin shouting, "All lost! To prayers, to prayers! All lost!" I always thought that was a funny line, and extremely insightful on Shakespeare's part. We so commonly turn to God only after everything else has failed, only after we come to believe that all is lost. God is our insurance of last resort.

And truly, I get that. Depending on God does not come naturally. Most of the time, we absolutely do not want to depend on God. It's a whole lot easier for us to rely on things we can see and touch and, most importantly, control. When things get out of control we don't always take it very well, which is why the farmer took off after granny with a chainsaw. We can really get angry when life's uncertainties mess up our plans.

As much as we may want it otherwise though, believing in God is not about certainty. Belief is about trust, and trust is something that develops in a relationship over time. The more we allow ourselves to rely on God, the more reliable God proves to be. Of course, that doesn't mean we are going to get everything we ask for. When we trust God, what we learn is that God does not promise that nothing bad is ever going to happen to us. God does not promise that we will necessarily be compensated our losses, in this life anyway. What God does promise is that regardless of what may happen we will not ever be abandoned. And ultimately, that insurance is worth a whole lot more than money.

There was a television program, preceding the 1988 Winter Olympics, which featured blind skiers being trained for slalom skiing, impossible as that sounds. Paired with sighted skiers, the blind skiers were taught on gentle slopes how to make right and left turns. When that was mastered, they were taken up the hill to the slalom course, where their sighted partner skied beside them shouting, "Left!" and "Right!" As they obeyed the commands, they were able to negotiate the course and cross the finish line, depending solely on the sighted skiers' word. It was either complete trust or catastrophe.

That's a great story, and a wonderful analogy. In more ways than we often realize, we are also blind as we go through life. We're blind to what lies ahead, no matter how much we may pretend otherwise. Though we can see signs that point to the future, we often don't know how to read them. Life is uncertain, despite our technology, regardless of our insurance. But while we may be blind, God is not. Our faith teaches us that even in our blindness we can live without fear if we give ourselves into God's care. If we learn to listen for and trust God's voice we can live in the blessed assurance that we will never be abandoned, and that all things will eventually work together for good. It is that trust I commend to you.

Amen.