January
22, 2017 3rd
Sunday after Epiphany Matthew
10
A soldier in a particularly good
mood walked into the barracks and said, “I have a $20 bill for the laziest man
in this barracks. Everyone scrambled to
their feet and rushed forward to tell how lazy he was. Everyone except on tall southerner who stayed
laying in his bunk and drawled, “Somebody come and roll me over and slip that
money in my pocket for me.”
I thought that silly quip would
be a good contrast to what Jesus is calling the disciples to do in our gospel
reading. Before we can understand Matthew
10, the "Missionary Discourse,” we have to remember what was going on at
the time Matthew’s gospel is written.
No one knows for sure when the
gospel was created but most theories put it at late in the first century. Matthew’s gospel is written to people who
were Jewish but converted to Christianity.
It is a particularly tough time for them. In the year 70 the Romans destroyed Jerusalem
and the Jewish temple. It was the
biggest crisis in Judaism since the Babylonians did the same thing 600 years
before. Without a temple there was no
center to the Jewish faith. Also, the
Romans began actively persecuting Jews.
Jewish leaders were trying to scrape together whatever remnants of their
religion that remained. Unfortunately
for them there was also a threat from within their religion – Christians. It appears as if an ultimatum was made to the
Jews who believed in Christ – either drop their beliefs in Jesus and remain
truly Jewish or get out of the synagogue.
This ultimatum tore families apart – children against children, parents
against children, spouses against each other.
If you found your family’s Thanksgiving table divided between Trump
supporters and Clinton supporters know that it was nothing to the division
between Jews who rejected Jesus and those who accepted him. Families were delivering each other over to
punishment. There were spies and
double-crossers.
If you’re a Christian life is
pretty tough. You can’t express your
faith publically and your family may have rejected you privately. In the gospel Jesus said, “Do not think that
I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a
sword. For I have come to set a man
against his father and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law
against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own
household.”
He goes on, “Whoever loves
father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or
daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the
cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”
You’ll remember from two weeks
ago that the Sermon on the Mount had many harsh teachings. Last week with the miracles Jesus said to a
man who wanted to bury his father before following Jesus, “Let the dead bury
their own dead.” It seems like Jesus
makes nothing but harsh and cruel demands of his disciples. Is this the price of eternal life? Is the bar really so high? Who wants this anyway? If this is what it takes to get into heaven
who wants to be in heaven with such a harsh God?
Let’s back up a bit. According to what we’ve learned so far in
Matthew’s gospel how do you become a disciple of Jesus? Do you hear one of his charismatic sermons
and decide you want to follow him? Last
week we read about a scribe, a Jewish religious expert, who did just that. What did Jesus say to him? “Foxes have holes,
and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his
head.”
You don’t apply to Jesus to be a
disciple. The impetus is not yours. It is the other way around. Jesus chooses you. In Chapter 4 we read about how you become a
disciple. Jesus went to Andrew and Peter
and James and John and said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for
people.”
Even today, you do not choose
God. God chooses you. In our passage from 1 Corinthians we read,
“Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by
human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to
shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God
chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to
nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of
God. He is the source of your life in
Christ Jesus.”
If you think you choose God then Matthew’s entire gospel is going
to read like a book of harshness and misery.
But if you realize God chooses you then Matthew’s gospel is strength and
encouragement. It tells you that just
because you’re chosen by God it does not mean you’re going to have a sweet and
happy life. It does not mean that
everyone at your Thanksgiving table is going to happily get along forever and
ever.
The original readers of Matthew
were hurting and scared. They were
questioning their faith and they were questioning what God was calling them to
do. Matthew tells them that persecutions
and family problems do not mean that they are not called or that God is not
working. No, they should take confidence
in being called.
Does being called mean that you
sit back and are lazy like the soldier in our opening example? No. It
means that you are driven to work for God’s kingdom. Why does Jesus send his disciples out on the
missionary journey that we read about?
The answer is 9:36, “When he was the crowds, he had compassion for them,
because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”
You have been chosen by God to
be his missionaries in the world. That
does not mean that you become like the Trozzos in Malaysia. That means work right here. Look at the community around us. It is a community that is harassed and
helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
“No,” you reply. “This is not a community that is harassed and
helpless. Sure, it’s not perfect, but in
general people around here are stable and happy. They are educated. They have jobs. They have opportunities.”
I would say otherwise. I
see people scrambling and crying for some of the most basic needs of
humans. Isn’t it interesting how crazy
many families’ schedules are because of children’s activities? I see a lot of bumper stickers that say
things like “Swim Taxi.” Children
complain about being too busy. Parents
feel overstretched by their kids involvement in drama and sports and scouting
and any number of things. Travel sports
are perhaps the most fascinating because the time and travel demands are so
great yet the schedules are so unpredictable.
Often players don’t know the schedule from one week to the next… Yet they do it. They’ll rearrange their family’s whole social
(and sometimes work) schedule over and over again to make it happen.
Why? Do parents think their
children will be good enough to get a college scholarship? Nope.
Do parents think that travel sports build their child’s character and
sense of teamwork and their physical fitness?
Some parents may indeed say that, but that’s not the reason.
Here’s the reason, though I think it resides at a sub-conscious
level. Kids want to be on the team
because it makes them feel worthwhile.
Though parents grumble, they involve their kids because there is
community with the other parents. They
may all sit in the bleachers and grumble about the demands of the team but they
feel a sense of belonging that they aren’t getting elsewhere.
I don’t like to put my family on the spot, but my daughter Emma
has advanced well in music. There is
somewhat of a community of parents among the top musicians in Canandaigua. All of our kids have made it into the
exclusive groups and performance. We all
have kids with crazy school schedules because of music. And we’ve all dumped small fortunes into
professional level instruments or private lessons. Every time there’s a performance we see each
other. It feels good to be in that
crowd, and it feels lonely if you are excluded.
If a person’s core sense of belonging and community is based on personal
achievement or career accomplishments or their children’s activities or anything
similar, that person has built their life on shaky ground. Jesus says it is like building a house upon
the sand. The community all around us is
harassed and helpless; lives built upon sand.
What happens if they lose the job?
What happens if their child doesn’t make the travel team, or when they
graduate? What then?
The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. You, just like the twelve disciples, have
been chosen and called by Jesus to go out into the harvest. You have been charged with the wondrous task of
inviting people into true community, lasting community. You are to invite people into a place where
they can find belonging; belonging this day and every day. You get to invite people into a reality of
security and rest. You get to witness to
something substantive and real.
Is it going to be easy? Are
people really interested in receiving what is good for them? Human nature being what it is, no. But you are called anyway, and that is a two
part call. One part is to go out and do
it. The other part is to look inward and
make sure we actually do have a community that is accepting and makes people
feel like they belong. Or said in a more
fancy way, a community that brings the kingdom of God to life here on earth.
Have confidence in being chosen and called by God, and be bold in
living out that calling.
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