Matthew 10:37-42
June 26, 2011
Someone stops in the middle of sawing or brushing or hammering to go to a van and fetch a particular tool for the person up on the roof who urgently needs in order to keep making the home dryer. A work crew takes time to buy items from sparsely stocked shelves at a local mom and pop shop to support the local economy. One member of that crew spends a good part of an afternoon sitting and chatting with the homeowner, triggering lots of smiles and spawning a new friendship. A plain brown lunch bag is blessed to special use when a person places a warm fuzzy for someone within it.
A songwriter sitting at home in a church manse prays over a passage of Scripture, pens some lyrics, then picks up a guitar to teach the Gospel in a new way to support rehabilitating, renewing experiences. Pan after pan of homemade lasagna is layered with love for neighbors near and known as well as in states southwest of here. One bank check after another gets dedicated to God’s glory. One degree of organizational coordination occurs after another, each one constructing a large-scale, faith-full, hope-filled adventure.
There are so many little missions that make up a big mission endeavor like the Appalachia Service Project. The entire service project is a composite of selfless things done in the spirit of Jesus. These are all significant acts of discipleship. This same protocol works for just about all the avenues of ministry we carry out here at FPC. It’s a myriad approach to ministry illustrating how the Gospel writer, Matthew, defines the meaning of Church.
When Matthew -- son of Levi, tax collector for Herod Antipas, and original disciple of Jesus -- wrote an account of the life, death and resurrection of his Lord, he had two particular goals. One was to recall and preserve Jesus’ example and instructions to his followers. The other was for Matthew to instruct his own community of disciples a few generations later. He was in a position of pastoral authority to really define how the Church -- as the Body of the Risen Christ -- was to go about being what Jesus intended it to be.
To summarize this in just one little word – SENT.
Matthew emphasizes mission. Not mission as merely a program of a congregation, but as “the defining purpose of everything the Church does.”[i] We exist to give the Gospel away, not to keep it gathered in one place.
Growing in faithful loyalty as disciples of Christ means giving away and growing beyond ourselves; even at the cost of self-preservation. Matthew punctuates this tough point by recalling one of the more radical statements Jesus made – you and I are to love Him above all else, even above allegiance to our own family and to our own life. I don’t this is a drastic ultimatum. I read this as having priority in the right place for any and all people who acknowledge that they’ve been redeemed by the Lord. The more we make the amazing grace of Jesus the absolute center of our lives, the more we will gladly share the Gospel and at the same time gain a rich life of faith, hope, love and holy peace.
To “take up the cross” means to receive what Jesus has offered. What He offered was salvation through subtraction – he poured out his pride and blood in order to gain new life and open the way to multiplying God’s healing, resurrecting love. This is our model for discipleship and mission. The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary puts it this way -- “Discipleship is represented not as adding on another worthy cause to one’s list of obligations, but a giving of self that is the ultimate self-fulfillment.”[ii]
When we think on mirroring Jesus in mission, we thank the Lord and pray for all people called to serve the Good News in big, bold ways. Today, I think especially of Bill and Angela Mannion’s family serving as missionaries in the very dangerous Nuba mountains of the Sudan. And, while not dangerous but still quite a full and faithful commitment, we also think of our upcoming hosting of families presently without homes through the Interfaith Hospitality Network and, as I’ve already mentioned, the next episode in our partnership with ASP.
To be clear, though, Matthew doesn’t just emphasize the big ticket discipleship acts. Whenever anyone does anything to welcome another in the name of Jesus and to help them know Jesus welcomes them, it is mission. Each little mission contributes to the very vital purpose of the being a sending church.
Notice he doesn’t record that Jesus referred to his first disciples as “The Great Ones.” Instead, he referred to them as “little ones.” This term can obviously refer to children, as it does in Luke 17, but Matthew notes it as a way Jesus referred to anyone acting in faith. We are all “little ones” because each time we selflessly give more of our time, talent and energy away in the name and spirit of Jesus we grow in faithful loyalty. Sometimes this giving away is in larger chunks, but usually, day to day, it happens one little bit at a time, adding to the great composite of discipleship that is the Church. We are never singular Christians. We are always representing our faithful, communal commitment to Christ’s interests, the way political envoys and ambassadors act on behalf of their sovereigns.
And so a colleague of ministry asks us, “What would happen if we truly believed we bear the presence of Christ to every person we encounter, in every home, workplace, or neighborhood we enter? What would happen if we saw every conversation as an opportunity to speak words of grace, every interaction as an opportunity to embody Christ’s love for the neighbor?”[iii]
Let’s not speculate about what would happen. Let’s say what will happen as each of us constantly and intentionally works to abide by the entire sending charge given to us by Jesus as it is recorded throughout Matthew 10:5-42.
We will seek God’s lost sheep – strangers, friends and family who have known God’s love and law and strayed from a faithful fold. We do so for the sake of holy hospitality, not for self-righteous rebuke or personal glory.
We will proclaim Jesus’ message that the kingdom of God is near. Fidelity to Jesus is not about a ticket into heaven as much as it is about joyfully riding on the divine train rails covering this earth. Our Lord’s work is always underway, near and far away.
We will participate in holy healing and the divine casting out of evil. Along with deep love, there is also deep hurt in people’s hearts. We represent Christ’s broadly cast, all-inclusive compassion. Along with goodness and grace, there are alchemies of evil across society. We represent the purging, reconciling power of the Prince of Peace.
We will embrace equity for all as well poverty for the sake of serving. This means we shed socially deconstructing desires of power and privilege. Our little missions are done not for status, but for solidarity with all one another as saints in the Light.
We will rejoice that God values every hair on the head of every human being. If some of you have less hair than others, don’t worry, I don’t interpret this to mean God loves you less! More importantly, this means that even when someone’s value as a child of God seems to escape our assessment, we will celebrate that person as being under God’s constant loving care.
And, to sum all this up, we will know the spiritual reward of doing even the smallest things – even giving a cup of cold water in the name of any disciple of Christ.
[Pastor steps out of pulpit, pours water into a cup and gives it to a disciple in the the name of another disciple on the other side of the sanctuary]
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment