“Are We Too Tame?”

Matthew 10:26-33

Today’s text, like every text, must be interpreted at three different levels, each speaking primarily to a different audience, but all necessary to understand the words of Jesus the text contains. Before getting into that, let’s set the text within its structural context in Matthew’s Gospel.

Listen to H. Michael Brewer’s paraphrase of Jesus’ words in verses 16-25: “Pretty soon… I’ll send you out to do the same work I’ve been doing, and it won’t be easy for you. At times you will feel like helpless sheep among starving wolves. Many will turn a deaf ear to your message. Doors will slam in your faces. If you visit a synagogue to share your message, they will drag you into the streets and flog you. If you preach in the streets, the police will arrest you and drag you into court. After a while the persecution will have you running like a rabbit from one town to the next. Eventually the hatred against you will grow so bitter that your own brother or your own daughter will look for a chance to turn you in. After all, a disciple is no better than the master. If they mistreat me and accuse me of working for the devil, they will certainly do the same to my followers.”

For the purpose of interpreting and understanding today’s text we must begin at the first level of interpretation, the original setting in the life and ministry of Jesus that parallels the setting of the text within the structure of Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus has called the twelve and is sending them out to do ministry in his name. The latter verses of Matthew 10 contain Jesus’ words of instruction to the disciples before he lets them go. Jesus was being totally honest with them about the hostility and rejection that might confront them. At the same time he assured them of God’s protection from ultimate destruction.

Their opponents could rob them of their mortal lives, but only God could deprive them of eternal life. If they were faithful witnesses even when their witness brought them into danger the God who watched over sparrows would also watch over them. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are being counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.”

Verses 32 and 33 set Jesus’ words in an eternal context. Be faithful to him now, come what may, and on Judgment Day that faithfulness will be acknowledged by the Lord. Deny Jesus in the face of hostility, opposition, and rejection and you will find yourselves denied entry into the Kingdom of God. Jesus’ message was essentially, “Don’t worry about what people think or say about you. Don’t be afraid of their accusations. Don’t even fear physical danger. God will take care of you in the most ultimate sense.” Or to quote Martin Luther, “Let goods and kindred go; this mortal life also. The body they can kill; God’s truth abideth still: His kingdom is forever.”

That brings us to level two: the message Matthew wanted to get across to his first century readers. Wrote Robert Obach and Albert Kirk: “Matthew’s church lived at the extreme boundaries of life, both physical and spiritual. The members of that community had to make radical choices in the context of life and death situations. To accept Jesus and to receive his teaching was to make a decision to accept the Kingdom of God and eternal life. To reject Jesus was to refuse God’s Kingdom. The stakes involved in remaining faithful to Jesus and the Church were eternal life or eternal death.”

Matthew’s Gospel was originally addressed to Christians facing imminent persecution, to people for whom making eternal choices were much more than intellectual exercises. It’s easy to confess Jesus and swear to do the right thing when nobody’s threatening you for doing so. Doing so in the face of financial loss, family rejection, social ostracism, prison, torture, and death was and is a whole ‘nother story. Faithfulness in the face of persecution is faithfulness indeed.

That brings us to level three. What is this text saying to you and me at this moment in our lives and our world’s history? What is Jesus saying to us? The same thing he said to his first disciples. What message does Matthew’s Gospel have for a twenty first century Presbyterian Church in Lanham, Maryland of this day of our Lord June 15, 2008? The same message Matthew was sending to his first readers: Faithfully following Jesus always brings an element of risk into our lives. Publicly professing, and more importantly, publicly living out our faith can bring us into conflict with our culture, our government, our families, our friends, and sometimes even the church itself.

Some in our culture will be unnerved when we uphold the fundamental doctrines of the faith, refuse to lump Christianity in with other world religions, oppose abortion, criticize our culture’s vulgarity and incivility, and seek to live lives that are sexually and otherwise moral and ethical. We will be called old fashioned and sometimes be labeled as bigots. We will be accused of wanting to censor all forms of media and entertainment. We will be told to mind our own business, to stay out of all things secular and stay in our narrowly defined ecclesiastical corner. They don’t want to hear all that God stuff.

Others in our culture will question our patriotism when we raise legitimate ethical questions about certain government actions and decisions. They’ll label us as commies and socialists for daring to criticize capitalism unrestrained by ethical considerations of the common good. They’ll call us naive troublemakers because we dare, in the name of Jesus, to seek liberty and justice for all. They too will tell us to mind our own business, to keep our minds on heaven and leave earth to the big boys and girls. They, too, will not want to hear all that God stuff.

To be a Christian is to be a faithful witness to the Gospel – the whole Gospel not just those parts of it that support our particular theological, economic, or political views. To seek to faithfully live and proclaim the whole Gospel is to day in and day out risk offending somebody about something, even if it’s nothing more than offending their sense of propriety. That’s okay; Jesus was constantly offending the propriety of the Scribes and Pharisees.

Years ago, as part of a sermon he preached to graduating seminarians, that irascible old Baptist, the late Carlyle Marney, asked them if after ten years out in the parish they would still be passionate proclaimers of the Gospel or would they by that time have been “hand tamed by the gentry?” That’s an appropriate question to ask any soon- to-be pastor of any era. It was really appropriate back then, because Dr. Marney asked it during a time when pastors were being fired, physically threatened, and having crosses burned in their yards because they dared to speak out against racial discrimination, segregation, and Jim Crow laws, or to march with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights leaders.

They were being fired, physically threatened, and having crosses burned in their yards because they dared, in the name of Jesus, to stick their noses where much of society, even Christian society, believed their noses did not belong. They were being fired, physically threatened, and having crosses burned in their yards because they refused to be hand tamed by the gentry. Just to be clear, a lot of Christian lay people experienced the very same things.

I like to think that I would have possessed the same passionate courage for Christ as they did, but I guess I’ll never find out. Unless, that is, a similar call to faith is demanded during my life and ministry. We never know when our acts of faithfulness might put us in harm’s way. We never know just how much we’ve been hand tamed by the gentry of our particular culture or society until we’re called to faithfully witness for Jesus in ways that risk social or cultural hostility, until we have to choose between professing Christ, come what may, or denying Christ because we’re afraid to do what we know is right.

In such times we must take seriously the words of Jesus in today’s text, especially those words he spoke three times: fear not – have no fear, do not fear, do not be afraid. If we know beyond the shadow of a doubt that our cause is the cause of Christ, then we have nothing ultimately to fear. We can break out of our culturally defined ecclesiastical cages and do the right thing for Jesus. We can resist those who try to tame the Gospel by taming those who proclaim it. We can courageously let “goods and kindred go, this mortal life also.”

And lest we forget, to not witness – to keep a safe, low profile - at such times is to deny Christ’s claim on us. The hard truth, the eternally damning truth, is that a non-witnessing disciple is no disciple at all. Amen.