My friend from
Tennessee, Mary Rogers, reminded me one day, “God promises to teach us if we
will get in touch with his word.” Mary is right. There is no substitute for our
reading and hearing Scripture. We know it is God’s Word. We know it tells the story of God’s son Jesus
Christ. We know its teaching deepens our love, knowledge, and service of God with
Jesus as our Savior and Lord through the presence of the Holy Spirit. We know
it is the Holy Spirit who spoke through the prophets and apostles, and who
inspires us with the desire for the truth that Scripture contains.
We also know there are
many ways God teaches. But God’s word, when read from scripture, is inspired by
God and is, as 2 Timothy says, “useful for teaching, for reproof, for
correction, and for training in righteousness.” We also know what others have
said. “The gospel is a message the world, by and large, does not want to hear.”
Our text this morning
may have provoked such a claim. Jesus
tells us that he comes not to bring peace, but a sword. He tells us he has come
to set a son against his father, and a daughter against her mother. This is
strong language. Perhaps not what you would expect to hear on Sunday.
Who wants to be part of
a God who comes not to bring peace, but a sword? Who wants to be part of a God
who comes to set children against their parents? This is a God we are likely to
tell, “no, thanks, we are fine, please do not come near us.” Do not come into
our world and especially do not come to this town, on our street, and into our
life.
This particular sense
of the God of power and might is all too familiar. It is hell fire and
damnation and the God of the law bringing a very clear and harsh message of a
life of following orders. Do this, do
not do that. We know the commitment to a life with this God is directed to stop
us from a life of self-interest and maximized personal pleasures, but it is
repressive.
Then there is another
view. It is the view of that sword being two-edged. God’s message does cut
through our demi-god life styles. But, on the other side of that edge we find
the God of love, the God of the covenant, the promise of forgiveness and
eternal salvation.
Of course this
two-edged sword cuts both ways. One way, the self-centered way, is to be cut
off from God. The other, the God centered way, is to be in covenant with God to
receive God’s grace through faith.
In the Old Testament
the early language for God’s covenant agreements with Noah, Abraham, and David used
the word “cut” as if to cut a deal. The cutting of the sacrificial animals was
a sign that a deal, a covenant, a promise, had been cut, or made, with the
people of Israel. This is the good side of God’s sword. God cuts a deal with
us, a covenant promise of eternal salvation.
Clayton Schmit has written, “Jesus came to
bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind and
freedom to the oppressed. While we are probably not poor, or captive, or blind,
or oppressed we do have our own personal prayers for healing, for a return to a
better day, for release from addictions The gospel is bad news for those who are of
the world and do not know of their need to be made new in Christ.”
In these truths the
message of Christ becomes personal and perhaps even offensive. It is bad news because
Jesus called for people to change. But, we do not want to change. We are like
the rich man who asked God how he could enter the kingdom of heaven.
Proclaiming his devotion to the church and to his stewardship of time and
talents he followed all the rules. Jesus told him to sell all he has, then come
and follow only me. Dare to be on my side. He faltered and stumbled and turned
from Jesus.
Abraham Lincoln had great
insight on these truths. He said, “Our task should not be to invoke religion
and the name of God by claiming God’s blessing and support for us, our family,
our jobs, our plenty – saying in effect that God is on our side. Rather,
Lincoln said, we should pray and worry earnestly whether we are on God’s
side.”
What a wake up call
from Lincoln
God does call us to
change. Not to live according to law alone, but according to love. To be
inclusive, to be willing to touch the filthy, unholy, mess of humanity just as
Jesus did. This is not the view of life our world has, is it?
Perhaps it is that sword
thing again. We are being cut off from the rest of the world when we profess
Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. We are being cut off from our friends and
yes, even our families, when they choose the path the world has provided to the
exclusion of the gospel message of a better world to come. Some folks who know
us as Christians who not only talk the talk, but walk the walk ignore us. Most
just tolerate us because we really don’t push our faith, our belief, even our
love, on them. Folk are tolerant because we hide our true passion.
Then we hear from
Jesus, “What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear
whispered, proclaim from the housetops.”
Now what do we say?
What do we do? Are we to say and live the same message that has always gotten
Christians in trouble, that Jesus has come to change the world. People who do
not know Jesus, people who live solely focused on making their life better for themselves,
do not like to be told what to do. Especially if the message is they will have
to abandon their worldly focus, centered on themselves, and sell it all.
That sword from Christ
separates the faithful from the rest of the world. It even may separate us from
our father on earth, our mother too, if we sell it all to follow Jesus.
Our world, society,
family, friends do not want things upset. Jesus’ message, the one we are to live
by, the one we are to shout from the rooftop, is a message too radical for this
world. The hippies were right, we are to live by love, we are to forgive one
another, we are to seek justice, and be agents of reconciliation. The world
merely groans.
But we are tired. We
have done our part. We have changed. We are here aren’t we? Surely we are done
with changing? What more have we to give up? What more are we to shout from the
rooftops? This world is filled with endless needy people and if we go on
shouting from the roof tops the world will hate us for it.
Perhaps, but this is
bigger than this world can imagine. It is bigger than us. Those who live for
their life in the world alone are not living at all, for they will die an
earthly death with no hope of the good news of Jesus Christ. Oh, you hear them
talk about their faith in God. They claim God is on their side. They see their success
and their stuff as evidence that God is on their side.
Jesus said it, those who find their life on their own terms
first, as they see fit to value it, to live it according to their self-styled
set of rules and regulations for their sole benefit, their life will be lost.
No matter how loudly they shout from the rooftops, “Follow me to the riches the
world has to offer, God is on my side.”
On the other hand, Jesus
said, those who lose their lives for my sake will find it. The life we loose is
the life of the self-proclaimed. We faithfully do not let it be our reason for
living. We turn instead to see whether we are on God’s side.
Being on God’s side
joins us with God’s passion for caring for all in God’s world. It is welcoming,
inclusive, and inviting to all who draw a breath and discover their life
changes them in ways they love, and in ways they feel cut to the quick. No one,
even those who want to claim God is on their side, is left out of the
conversation.
The two-edged sword of
the gospel cuts deeply for those who follow it today. Yet, it does cut both
ways. For the godly life is not just a life of separation and sacrifice. It is
also a life of fullness and satisfaction.
Dear ones, we do not have more to give up. We
have more to receive. When we die to the seductive ways of the world we live in
the richness of God’s hope, God’s love, and God’s grace. So filled with the
unbridled passion and love we have for God we proclaim a contrary message to
the world that is filled with faith, honesty, compassion, freedom, justice, and
joy. We live a changed life. A life on God’s side.
This church, and
these few hard scrabble folk who have gathered, have shown the world whose side
we are on. Oh, we may not always have our “I have decided to follow Jesus” t-shirt
on. Some day’s life is just too raw.
But we have changed. We know to play God’s
card. We know this place, and our love for it, and our love for one another,
and God pull’s us through.
This is the edge we
prefer. Being on God’s side, being faithful as servants doing God’s work on our
little corner of this world, ignoring the screams of another way. Having
changed to become people who love, who bring hope where all seems lost, our
desire is to live this good news.
Jesus Christ has never changed, nor will we.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
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