Published weekly on our web site,
the Weekly Sermon is provided for you
to reflect upon and read at your leisure.

If you were unable to attend church,
you'll find this helpful.  An archive
of past sermons is also available.

(printer-friendly version)

Click here for sermon audio (10.1  MB mp3)

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Scripture: Matthew 10:40-42

"Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward."

I receive these catalogues from time to time. The words, “Rewards Options,” are printed across the front cover. They are the modern equivalent of Green Stamps, the little books of stamps we would save when I was a child. My mom would tuck them away, book after book, until we had enough to get the new barbeque grill or ice cream freezer we had been eying for months.

This is a similar system, only the credit card company keeps up with the stamps. It’s much advanced. You don’t have to lick the glue off those stamps. That was sometimes my job, and I can still remember the sick feeling I got from the taste of that glue. Who knows where those stamps had been anyway. It’s a wonder those things didn’t kill us.

Anyway, now days the bank, the credit card company, or the brokerage account keeps up with the “credits,” and when you have saved enough, or perhaps that should be spent enough, you get a reward. And there are lots of them. Sometimes I look through the catalogues and drool a little; sailboats, nice watches, Alaskan Cruises, cameras, you name it and it’s in those catalogues. It’s pretty impressive until you look at the number of credits you need to really get something you want; that’s when the impression leads to depression.

I had never thought about rewards options for the Gospel, until I read this passage. Jesus speaks of three different rewards. I know that’s not as many as you find in the catalogues, but this was first century, AD. Jesus says that if you receive a prophet as a prophet, then you get a prophet’s reward; a righteousness person as a righteous person, gets a righteous person’s reward. And furthermore, if you give a cup of cold water to one of these little ones, then you surely won’t loose your reward.

Now, I realize that these are not as appealing on the surface as some of the rewards offered by the catalogues, but stay with me for a minute and let’s talk about what Jesus is saying. Maybe these three rewards are far more appealing than you think. As a matter of fact even though their not pictured before you in glossy pictures, they may be the greatest rewards you could imagine.

Just before this, Jesus has said some pretty harsh things. You remember the text from last week. In it, Jesus says that he who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel will find it. Now, how appealing does that sound? Furthermore, he says, “He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.” I had some people come up to me after the service with some real questions about that one; mostly parents of teenagers, but they did have real questions.

I was listening to a New Testament professor this week who was talking about this text and he said he remembered worrying about this text as a child. They read it one day in Sunday school, and he felt really bad because he knew he loved his parents more than he loved Jesus. Finally, his mother became so concerned about him that she told him not to worry about it, she didn’t mind.

In reality, there is some background for this passage that we need to understand. This was a difficult time for the fledgling community we call the early church. People were suspicious of them, especially the Jews and the Romans. The Jews saw them as a threat, a deviation from the real faith. The Romans were afraid they might start some insurrection, disturbing the peace of the empire. Both groups looked upon the early Christians with suspicion.

Consequently, it was often dangerous to receive a traveling Christian. Now, in reality, the three groups Jesus mentions are the same. The prophet is a righteous per-son who Jesus would also consider a “little one.” They are prophets because they are rightly speaking the word of God, and of course in Matthew’s day these were the traveling preachers and evangelists who were spreading the word of the Gospel. They called them prophets because of what the spoke and righteous men because they were doing the right thing, living in obedience to God through what they were teaching. And they were “little ones,” because they were so vulnerable because of what they were doing in the name of God. Consequently, anyone who receives them becomes just like them, and becomes worthy of receiving their reward. The very presence of the traveling preacher or evangelist becomes a reward in itself, even though Jesus is speaking of a greater reward for them.

They are creating a new community, a kind of new world order, with a new set of values and principles, even a new reason for existing. The Gospel was born out of the Jewish faith and the Roman world; they are in a manner of speaking the earthly parents of the Good news that has come to us through Jesus, but the Gospel is radically different, and out of necessity creates a radically different kind of community with a different set of people. You can imagine how threatening this was for the Jews and the Romans.

That is precisely what Jesus meant by loving mother and father more than me. When we are born into this world, our parents become our first teaches, and they do the best they can to help us get a good start in this world, conveying to us the faith and values that they have learned from their parents and from their culture. Now remember that Matthew is writing to and Jesus is speaking to a generation of people who had never before heard the Gospel. Jesus has set into being a whole new world. It’s a paradigm shift unlike any the world has ever known. The way of living, the values, the world-view, and even the community is radically different, unlike anything they had ever known. These early Christians had to turn their back on the values and traditions their parents had taught them and take up the teachings of Jesus. They were the ones who had to make the very first radical break from their culture, and they had to do it completely. Jesus left for his disciples the task of beginning an entirely different community. It was both threatening and dangerous.

Jesus invites us into a new kind of community, much like the family, that forms our identity and forms our opinions about the world in which we live. Several years ago, when I was attending an academy for spiritual formation, one of the presenters gave us a very interesting image. She was talking about the correlation between community and our relationship to Christ. The image consisted of a circle with spokes leading to a center, much like a wagon wheel. If you put Christ at the very center, then we have an image representing a community with Christ at the center as it should be. The individuals move along those lines from the outer circle to the center as they draw closer to Christ, but as they draw closer to Christ they are also drawn together in the community. By the very nature of the wagon wheel, as they move toward the center where Christ is located, then they also move closer to one another.

I found that to be a powerful image for me, both as it represented the church and as it represented what happens to us as we come closer to Christ. As we enter more fully into the body of Christ, the church, then we become more Christ-like. The church is supposed to change us; that what it is for. That’s why Christ gave his life for the church, that we might be changed in his likeness through our work in the church.

Now, let me say that I am not talking so much about the institutional church as it exists today, but rather about the body of Christ as it was envisioned from the very beginning. The church as represented in any period of time falls short of this vision as it always has, yet we strive to make every community fit into the vision just as we try as individuals to become more Christ-like.

Imagine the kind of community that could actually be transformative. It would consist of a group of individuals whose main goal in life is to become more like Jesus, the Christ after whom we should pattern our lives. Each one of those individuals would be aware that he or she falls short of the goal in so many ways, and each one would be willing to be challenged and corrected by one another as they strive together to be more Christ-like in everyday life. Imagine being able to meet together on a regular basis with a small group of individuals like that, and to spend some time reflecting on our lives and how we are doing. In essence, the group of disciples chosen by Jesus did that on a regular basis. That group of twelve men was the first church. They were to be the example of what a church should be as they tried, sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing, to live out the Gospel in their world.

Yet, even with their failures, look at the difference they made in the world around them. That’s what is truly powerful. They so fashioned their lives around Christ, that even when he ascended to heaven, they were able to continue to do his work here on earth. As it says in Acts, they turned the world upside down. Whenever a community strives to truly become the body of Christ, it makes all the difference in the world. It becomes a community that has the redeeming power of Jesus at work within it. It changes not only the individuals who are part of it, but it also changes the world around it.

We recently honored a friend of mine who has that vision of the church. Sam Sullins has taught both youth and adults in our church for many years. He has his own opinions about things, and they are strong opinions, forged out of deep convictions. Those of you who know him well will agree with me. Yet, he also has the ability to listen to others and to learn from them. He loves to teach because of what he learns from teaching. I believe that is goal in life is to be shaped and formed by the Gospel of Christ as he helps to shape and form others in that same Gospel.

I often find people who come to a church and expect it to simply undergird their personal opinions and prejudices. They judge the sermon, and sometimes even the Scripture, on the basis of their own set of values, many of which have been formed more from the culture around them than from the Gospel itself. That is what Jesus meant when he spoke of loving mother or father more than me. He is really asking, who are you going to follow? Who will you pattern you life after? Do you want to accept the values I give you through Gospel, or do you want to live by the values of the world, or of the culture in which you have been bred? That’s the question. Do you come to the church and try to mold it according to your own cultural values, or do you come to church with a sincere desire to be shaped by the values of Jesus? Which is it for you?

You see, Christ didn’t die in order to create a church which would simply make us feel good about what we already believe and hold true. Christ died for a church that would change us and mold us after himself. Worship and small groups within the church are like the water that gradually cuts through the rocks and smoothes the stones in a creek-bed.

I love the old analogy of the piece of marble. You look at it uncut, and it’s just a rock. It has been shaped by the rough edges of a saw or a chisel as it was pulled out of the side of a mountain. Leave it as it is and it will be nothing but a rock for all of eternity. But put it in the hands of a master and see what it can become. The master sees something beautiful inside, something it cannot see in itself. And the master takes chisel and sand paper in hand and begins to carve away the excess so that the beautiful image can be revealed. It’s a painful process for the marble, for it must give away a great deal of what it cherishes within itself. And yet, without the hand of the master, it remains just a piece of stone and fails to become the great masterpiece of art it was really created to be.

And so it is with us. Within each of us is a great masterpiece that only God, our creator can see. And when we put our lives and our souls in the hands of the master, only he can chisel away the excess and reveal the true beauty within. And in the chisel-ing away comes the great reward that is promised, the opportunity, indeed the privilege of sharing God’s live in the world and being involved in God’s continuing creation of the world.