Second Sunday after Pentecost, 06/22/2014

Sermon on Matthew 10:24-39, by Luke Bouman

Matthew 10:24 "A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; 25 it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household! 26 "So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. 27 What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. 28 Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 And even the hairs of your head are all counted. 31 So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows. 32 "Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; 33 but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven. 34 "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 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; 36 and one's foes will be members of one's own household. 37 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; 38 and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

Trying to Find Life

My son's college journey began last week, just a few days after his High School graduation. We went to an orientation and registration session for incoming freshman, complete with pep talks about what the college experience would be like, both for parents and students. At this particular university there is a great deal of emphasis on "finding vocation" for the students, which is a fancy way of saying that the careers they pursue will bring them more joy in life if they find it, as Frederick Buechner has suggested, "at the intersection where your great joy meets the worlds deep need."

That experience had me thinking about this text and about both the promise and the danger of seeking "life" and "joy" and even "vocation" in this way. I'll get around to the promise later. First, I think it would be helpful to look at the danger. Sometime, just over 40 years ago, my father had a conversation with a cab driver that he turned into a short story of sorts, a dialog, really. He called it "Yes and No in a Taxicab" and you can read the whole thing if you can find the back issue of The Cresset journal in which it first appeared in January, 1971. As a part of the conversation, the taxi driver admitted that his kids were the main motivation for his life. He was driving the cab as a second job to put his son through college at the time. The danger, as the cab driver himself admitted, is that there were problems with putting his kids in such a position. Kids grow, change, sometimes rebel against their parents. They move away, begin lives of their own. In the case of this cab driver, his worst nightmare was that his son would finish college and be drafted to fight in the US military action in Vietnam, at that time a very real possibility. He poured his life into his son's future, and yet both that future and his life's work were fragile, hanging by a thread, in danger of being snuffed out in an instant.

His kids had become his "yes", his affirmation in life. But there were some powerful "no" realities endangering his "yes". In religious terms he had elevated his kids to "god" status. That's what it means to have a "yes," an affirmation like that. The difficulty is that whenever we elevate anything to that status that isn't actually God, then the affirmation can (and eventually will) collapse into a negation, something that says "no" to us and to our lives. This continues for everyone until we face the final, ultimate negation, the "no" of death. People, all of us, are very creative in the use of things as affirmation apart from God. We have to be. Every one of them lets us down, collapses into negation sooner or later. So we scurry around looking for a new one, never realizing that we are in a death spiral of sorts and that no matter what we find, we end up negated.

When Jesus talks in our text today about trying to find our life and losing it, and about loving father, mother, son or daughter more than him making us unworthy of him, it is just these things he is talking about. Apart from life with God at the center, our lives are lost, they become devoid of meaning. We exist, but we do not LIVE. The way this played out in Jesus' day was a bit different than today. In Jesus' time, family, the primary social group, was a place everyone received their identity, and even their calling. You social status in that feudal society was determined by your family and people had little choice about it. Jesus' message in that context was probably as jarring, if not more jarring to his listeners than it would be today.

Devotion to family was not simply an affection one held for relatives. It was an indication of complicity with a social structure that benefitted everyone who was higher up the ladder than you, and in which you benefitted from those below you. The economic system was built to exploit others. What Jesus is calling for here is a complete reworking of the familial, social, political, religious, and economic order of his day. This was radical stuff. It is no wonder that the people with power killed him. He was a threat to everything, everyone, who was invested in keeping the system as it was.

In that system, affirmation came from knowing your place and fulfilling your assigned role. Knowing and staying in your "place" had rewards. Getting out of line had consequences. Everyone depended on this. But at its core it was demeaning. It was built on any number of faulty affirmations, on "yeses" that would eventually collapse into "no". Jesus, who was himself God's great "YES" to this reality of sin and death, was a living breathing alternative. Jesus' message brought hope and life, a new sort of "YES" to people by inviting them to know a new family, with God as the head of the household. Jesus taught and practiced forgiveness. Jesus found and affirmed those whom society had thrown out. Jesus invited people into a new reality in which there is no "ladder" with some higher, some lower, some at the top, some at the bottom. Jesus envisioned and spoke of a "shalom," a new era of harmony, in which all would be welcome together at God's table.

To get there, God invites us, in Christ, to walk from one "life," and its faulty affirmations, to another, with God affirming at the center. In God's new life, even death's "no" is no longer the most powerful reality. New life, something that begins now and is completed in the resurrection, is stronger by far. Hanging on to our faulty affirmations, to the life purposes of our own making, simply won't allow us to get there. Ultimately in death, we must all let go of them. Ultimately, there as we die, God's love finally has the last word. Even though we cling to the danger of the idea of finding our purpose, God will claim us eventually, and lead us to new and renewed life.

LIFE Finds Us!

So much for the danger of the idea of finding one's purpose. Now let's look at the promise. In our text today Jesus says that God knows us so intimately that even the number of hairs on our heads is known (a diminishing number for me, sadly). A God that knows us this well, knows our hearts and passions. A God this intimately interested in us knows our skills and abilities and has given them for the enrichment not of ourselves but of the world in which we live. This God indeed does "call" us to be who we are. (The word "vocation" comes from the Latin for "calling", and everyone has one.)

The word of grace and life in this passage is that we are called into a new family of God. We are gifted in that family for the sake of the world. We gather with that family to be renewed in our common life, hearing God's word spoken and sharing the Body and Blood of Christ each week in worship. God's family gathers, prays, talks and eats together so that we are inspired to lose the lives that empty us, and find the life in which God fills us so full that the powers of the fallen world cannot destroy what God has created.

In the life that God lives, our relationships are not abandoned, but transformed. Note that Jesus does not say we shouldn't love people, especially our families. He simply says we should not love them more than him, more than God's living affirmation. When we find our true affirmation in the life giving arms of God, we are free to spread that affirmation to everyone in our lives. We are free to see people, not as someone we can exploit for our own gain, but as people to serve and give our lives freely to. In this way, God's affirmation spreads, person to person, life to life.

It is here that we find our true purpose. Here, at the intersection of our joy and world's need, we do find life. What surprises me the most, whenever I rediscover this simple truth (like most people, I continue to get lost until God finds me again), is that God affirmation, my "vocation", has been right there all along. I'm so thankful that God, in Christ, is a patient God. Because I keep wandering off, chasing this "yes" and that "yes" and finding only a world full of "no". Every time, just when I give up hope, God finds me again with a renewed "YES".

Dr. Luke Bouman
Valparaiso, IN
E-Mail: Luke.bouman@gmail.com

(top)