Matth 10:16-33 Fourth Trinity 2005
We have all heard the expression about the weather in parts of Texas: if you don’t like it, just wait an hour or two and it will change. I heard the same thing this past week in New England, where the weather is changeable because of the constant interaction of the land-mass and the sea. On the other hand, there are some places where the weather almost never changes. I lived in one of these for a year, in southern California. Oddly enough, the sea is given credit for the amazingly stable climate in Southern Orange County. I can remember week after week of exactly the same weather.
Some things are always changing. Other things seem never to change. And, we have one of those before us in the gospel lesson for today. In chapter 10 of his gospel, Matthew reports the time when Jesus sent the original 12 disciples out to preach the good news to the nation Israel. They were to go only to the Jews, not to the Gentiles, nor to the Samaritans who were half-Jewish and half-Gentile. The situation was, in many respects, unique. It was the maiden voyage, so to speak, for the disciples. But, when Jesus sent them out he gave them advice on how to proceed, he gave them warnings about what they would find, and he gave them encouragements about the trouble they were going to face.
Jesus first words of advice were these: 16"Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” I have read several commentators and teachers who suppose that Jesus here compares the disciples to sheep to make the point that they were stupid. Indeed, I’ve read accounts of shepherds who are candid about the foolishness of sheep. Granting that these shepherds’ insights are all accurate, I don’t think that is exactly Jesus’ point in this passage. Clearly, as we scan down through what he tells his disciples, the mention of sheep and wolves has far more to do with the dangers the disciples are going to face when they go about their work of evangelism. The whole enterprise, Jesus tells them, will be much like sending a pack of sheep into the midst of wolves. In such a case, what are you going to expect? Well, of course – it is going to be an attack from the wolves.
Before going on, I must say confess that the view of evangelism that says we must tailor the gospel for seekers must be talking about some sort of parallel universe. Wolves are seekers, of course. But somehow I cannot imagine Jesus advocating a form of preaching the gospel that would be attractive to wolves. If you’re a sheep, you don’t need to make yourself attractive to a wolf. You are already attractive to wolves, and they will eagerly attack you and kill you and eat you alive.
Dropping the figures of speech, Jesus makes it crystal clear what the disciples are going to encounter: “ 21"Now brother will deliver up brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. 22And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake.” You see, family ties are ordinarily thought to be the ones which are strongest, the kinds of bonds which withstand the greatest strains. But, when it comes to the preaching of the gospel, even these bonds will evaporate, and the hostility against the gospel will take its place.
Now it’s easy to imagine how the disciples received this kind of warning. I can just see Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and all the rest of them – rubbing their hands in glee and saying, “O, goody! We’re going to get ourselves arrested, and beaten, and thrown into prison. I can hardly wait!!”
And, so Jesus gives this some words of encouragement as well.
First of all, he points out to them that this hostile reception is something that should not surprise them at all. 24"A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. 25It is enough for a disciple that he be like his teacher, and a servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they call those of his household!” The point is obvious – you have what kind of reception I have received, Jesus tells them. What, then, should you expect? If they call me the Lord of the Flies, what are they going to call you?
This point is one that should be emphasized to all Christians, and particularly to your children. It is natural and wholly understandable for children to seek approval, for children to seek approbation, for children to seek the admiration of those they admire. The problem with this natural inclination is simply this: when it comes to Christian character, the world naturally despises things that remind it of Christ. Why? Jesus explained this to Nicodemus in John chapter 3: “19And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.”
At any rate, the hostility the Christian encounters when living a godly life, the persecution a Christian faces when proclaiming the gospel by word or deed – this should come as no surprise. It’s what the world gave to Christ at his coming, and it is what his disciples should expect in as well.
Jesus offers another encouragement: whatever happens to us in our service to Christ is within our Father’s will. 29“Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will. 30But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.”
It were well for us to notice that Jesus here is NOT saying that we shall not fall. Rather, we are to take comfort that even as no sparrow falls apart from the Father’s will, so also no Christian shall fall unless it is the Father’s will.
Why, you may ask, is it ever the Father’s will that a Christian should fall? By fall, I mean in the sense that Jesus is speaking about here – a fall from the result of persecution. We cannot explore all the reasons in detail in the space we have here; but it needful to notice three things:
First of all, there is nothing our Father requires of us in Christ that Christ himself has not already experienced to the full. And, that includes persecution unto death. If we suffer, if we should ever die for the sake of the gospel, this is nothing that God the Father did not already ask of his Son. It is nothing which the Son has not already endured for our sake. So, once more, we who are his disciples should not think we are greater than he, so as to somehow be “exempt” from the slings and arrows which he faced.
Second, Christ’s sufferings, and Christ’s persecutions, and Christ’s death accomplished two things: it was God’s way of drawing us to himself and saving us from our sins; and it was God’s way of ensuring that those who rejected Christ are utterly and irrevocably damned. As the Puritan proverb puts it: the same sun that melts the ice also hardens the clay.
Therefore, it is no surprise that the suffering of Christians accomplishes the same thing. It was the martyrdom of Christians that won the Roman Empire and turned it into a Christianized society in three centuries after Jesus died on the Cross. It was the spectacle of Christians patiently enduring suffering that scalded the consciences of those who watch. One conclusion which many of them drew was this: the gospel is true, these people testify by their martyrdom that the message they proclaim is true.
And, of course, the other effect will also happen. The suffering of Christians will seal the doom of those who never repent. The horror of this first dawned on my when I was a fairly young Christian in an undergraduate course in philosophy at Texas Tech University. Bruce Waters was the chairman of the department at that time. He was an elderly, curmudgeonly man who loved to identify Christians in his classes and to mercilessly ridicule and mock them. I remember one day when he set upon a young girl who professed to believe in the Bible. That was all Dr. Waters needed to get him going, and we spent the next fifteen minutes listening to him interrogate the girl about the Bible and the gospel and then to ridicule both the girl and her profession of faith.
As I sat there watching this, it dawned on me how horrible it was going to be for Dr. Waters at the judgment. I don’t know if there is any heavenly equivalent to video-tape or not. I suspect there is. And, if Bruce Waters says to Jesus, “I never heard the truth,” I am sure that what I saw – or something very much like it – will be entered into the record. The gospel that could save Bruce Waters from eternity in hell could very well be exactly the gospel which he scorned and mocked and ridiculed that morning in an undergraduate class in philosophy.
Here is the point about Christian suffering: like Jesus’ suffering, the suffering of his disciples will both save and damn those who behold it. No suffering is ever pointless. No suffering for the gospel is ever fruitless. Eternal destinies turned on the sufferings of Christ; and eternal destinies turn on the sufferings of the Body of Christ.
And that highlights the last words in today’s gospel – the eternal, the decisive consequences of our faithfulness. “32"Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven. 33But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven.”
I can remember the first time it ever dawned on me that I was watching someone deny Christ. It was in Nashville, TN, somewhere near downtown. Barbara and I were en route to Ohio, and we attended an Ash Wednesday service early in the morning. The minister, as I recall, was a very suave sort of fellow, and the longer we got into his homily, the more it smelled of snake oil. I’m afraid I don’t remember his text, but I do remember it had some hard things in it – like today’s homily. What I retain is the way he smoothly glided past all the hard parts. But, that is not what made me think of him as denying Christ. Instead, it was his concluding invocation.
As you are now accustomed, I conclude these homilies with an invocation: in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. It’s not my idea – it is a very old custom going back many, many centuries. But that Ash Wednesday, I heard this invocation at the end of his homily: “In the name of the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sanctifier. Amen.”
For some reason that got me to pondering. Why change the classical invocation? Well, it wasn’t hard to figure out – there were many other clues in his message, pointing to his love of the current trendiness in gender-inclusiveness. And, in this denomination, the badge of inclusiveness is – interestingly – the AVOIDANCE of gender particularity, especially things the use of terms like “father” and “son” in the standard Trinitarian formula. Too, too patriarchal, you see. But part and parcel with this denial of gender particularity is also a denial of Jesus’ humanity, very human maleness. That is what this preacher was denying.
And, then I remembered what John had written to Christians in the first century: “Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, 3and every spirit that does not confess that[a] Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.” Friends, the flesh John is speaking of here is the son of Mary, a man who is still a man, seated at the right hand of God the Father in the highest heaven.
And, then, I remembered these words from Matthew chapter 10: he who denies me before men, him will I deny before my Father who is in heaven.
We began this morning noting that sometimes the weather is something that is always changing; and sometimes the weather is something that never changes. The situation Jesus’ disciples face when they first go out to preach is one of those things which never changes, and the advice, and warnings, and encouragements which Jesus gives them are just as relevant to us today as they were to the Apostles as they went forth to proclaim the gospel.
In our day, let us pay careful attention to what Jesus tells us here, so we may not deceive ourselves and one another about the opposition we face when proclaiming the gospel. May God grant us to hear Jesus’ words, to take his advice, to heed his warnings, and to take courage from the things he tells us here to encourage us. May we all find grace to hear our names confessed by Jesus before his Father in heaven, because we have been faithful to confess his name before the world around us.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
