Tag: discipleship

Jesus Breaks the Uneasy Truce

David Herbert1 Comment

A sermon on Matthew 10:24-39 exploring what Jesus meant when he said he came not to bring peace but a sword, and why the peace of God’s kingdom is deeper, costlier, and more transformative than any uneasy truce.

What is whispered in your ear?
What is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the rooftop.

You know the image John paints for us of the beloved disciple,
the one Jesus loved,
reclining with him at table.

John chose not to name that “beloved disciple”.
I prefer to name the beloved disciple as “anyone”,
anyone who chooses to stay so close to Jesus
that they can hear his heart beating,
can feel his breath
and catch the whisper of his words in the ear.

What is whispered in your ear?

What is whispered in your ear
proclaim from the rooftop,
in this wounded world.

For the world is wounded

Our Collect today recognises that reality.
It does not pretend otherwise.

God our saviour,
look on this wounded world
in pity and in power;
hold us fast to your promises of peace
won for us by your Son,
our Saviour Jesus Christ.

And so we pray that God our Saviour
will look upon this wounded world
in pity and in power,
and hold fast to his promises of peace.

Deep peace.
A peace beyond all human understanding,
A peace won at enormous cost.

Not the shallow peace
that merely papers over the cracks.

Not the fragile peace
declared with cynical calculation,
while old wounds fester beneath the surface.

Not the peace that can be shattered
by the next angry word,
the next act of violence,
the next grasp for power.

That is a peace that has no love for its enemy,
that’s always ready to flare with hatred,
a peace that is defended at great cost,
with arsenals of weapons of destruction,
even tongues at the ready for lashing out.

That is a momentary peace,
a temporary ceasefire of hostility,
but the peace of God’s kingdom
is different.

In the peace of God’s kingdom,
justice and mercy embrace
and all things are made new.

Jesus breaks the uneasy peace
thank God.

Because the peace we so often settle for
is not peace at all.

It is avoidance.
It is silence.
It is looking away.
It is learning to live comfortably
with somebody else’s suffering.

And that is why Jesus speaks of a sword.
Which is difficult to hear.

Especially on a day when many of us are giving thanks for fathers,
when we are celebrating the love and care that family can give.

Yet Jesus says:
“I have come to set a man against his father.”

Not because fathers do not matter.
Not because families do not matter.

But because the kingdom of God reaches deeper
than every other loyalty we possess.

Not because he delights in conflict.
Not because he blesses violence.

But because truth has a way of disturbing lies,
justice has a way of disturbing privilege,
and love has a way of disturbing anything
that treats God’s children as less than human.

When Jesus stands with the excluded,
the rejected,
the last and the least,
those who benefit from their exclusion
rarely applaud.

The sword is the division that comes
when God’s kingdom collides
with the kingdoms we have built for ourselves.

It is the cost of proclaiming from the rooftops
what has been whispered in the ear.

For when you stay close enough to Jesus
to hear his heartbeat,
You begin to hear what he hears.

The cry of the hungry.
The grief of the forgotten.
The anger of the humiliated.

The longing of those denied dignity,
bread,
or hope.

And once you have heard those voices
beating in the heart of Christ,
it becomes impossible to pretend
that everything is fine.

The old peace begins to crack.

And through those cracks,
the kingdom begins to appear.

Which sounds wonderful.

Until we realise what it asks of us.

Because Jesus is not inviting us
merely to admire the kingdom.

He is inviting us to live for it.
To spend our lives for it.

And that may be a better way to hear
what Jesus says next:
“Whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.”

Perhaps better:
“Whoever spends their life for my sake,
for the sake of the kingdom,
will find it.”

Every one of us spends our life somehow.

Sometimes it can be trivial.
Spending our lives accumulating things.
Spending our lives to make a name for ourselves
(a name that will be so soon forgotten when we’re gone).

Or, we can spend our lives
on the pearl of great price,
spending ourselves on truth
spending ourselves on mercy,
spending ourselves on reconciliation,
spending ourselves on the hard work of God’s peace.

And if we spend our lives this way
we shouldn’t expect everyone to approve.

After all, they called Jesus Beelzebul,
a name which means the lord of filth,
lord of the dung heap,
and the sort of name we might be branded with
if we follow Jesus.

Those who expose what is rotten
are rarely thanked by those who benefit from the smell.
Those who expose wounds
are rarely thanked by those who profit from them.
Those who challenge exclusion
are often accused of causing division.
Those who stand with the last and least
are frequently labelled troublemakers.
Those who dare to believe in a peace
that goes deeper, beyond human imagining,
will be misunderstood,
criticised,
caricatured,
and even crucified.

This is what we are getting into when we become followers of Jesus,
when we become his beloved disciples,
close to the breath of God
whispering the words
that save us from the shallow peace
with its consequences of entrenched privilege,
deepening division and forgotten neighbours.

Jesus tells his beloved disciples:

Do not be afraid.
Do not be afraid of those who misunderstand you.
Do not be afraid of those who mock you.
Do not be afraid of those who call good evil
and evil good.
Do not be afraid of losing your reputation.
Do not be afraid of spending your life this way.

For the kingdom of God
is worth a life.

The kingdom where justice and mercy embrace.
The kingdom where the last are welcomed first.
The kingdom where wounds are healed.
The kingdom where all things are made new.

So, perhaps the question for us this morning is:
What is whispered in your ear?

What is Christ saying to you
when you stay close enough
to hear his heart beat,

close enough to hear in his heart
the cry of the earth,
the forgotten,
the humiliated,
the excluded?

And what is whispered in your ear,

proclaim from the rooftops,
whatever the cost.

Famous Last Words and a To Do List

David HerbertLeave a comment

A sermon for Trinity Sunday reflecting on the last words of Paul to the church in Corinth and the last words of Matthew’s gospel: 2 Corinthians 13.11-end & Matthew 28.16-end

Final words matter.
We know this.

When someone knows these may be the last things they say, they do not usually waste words.
Final words are often concentrated words.
Distilled words. Words carrying weight.

And this morning we have two sets of final words.
The closing words of Paul to the Corinthians.
And the closing words of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel.

Famous last words.

And what strikes me is how full of verbs they are.
So much doing.

Paul concludes his difficult letter with a flurry of verbs:
Rejoice.
 Strive for full restoration.
 Encourage one another.
 Be of one mind.
 Live in peace.

And then perhaps most awkwardly for many English Christians:
Greet one another with a holy kiss.

That is quite a list. It’s a lot to be doing.

Paul is not writing these words into a peaceful, tidy church.
Something has gone wrong in Corinth.
There has been conflict, bruised relationships, suspicion, division, hurt.

This letter has carried frustration and pain.
So these verbs are not decorative.
They are medicine and prescription,
born of blood, sweat and tears.

This is what you must do, says Paul,
if you are to become again the community God calls you to be.
Not merely what you should believe.
But what you should be doing.

And then we come to Matthew.

Matthew ends his gospel in much the same way.
Again—final words.
Again—a mountain.

That should sound familiar.
Matthew has brought us up mountains before.
The mountain of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus taught his disciples how life in God’s kingdom works.

And now, at the end, the disciples are doing what Jesus told them to do.
They go to the mountain.

Already, before Jesus speaks, they are obeying.

And there Matthew gives us an honest little detail:

When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted.
Isn’t that wonderfully human?
Not certainty and triumph.
Not spiritual superheroes.
Just disciples –
worship and doubt standing side by side.

And to that mixed-up group—to worshippers and doubters alike—Jesus gives his final command.
And again the verbs come tumbling out:
Go.
 Make disciples.
 Baptise.
 Teach.
Teach them to obey all that I have commanded you.

Again—so much doing.
And perhaps we hear these as tasks. Instructions.
A church to-do list.
A very different list to how we normally list all we do in church!

Why all these verbs?
Why this insistence on action?

And the answer, I think, is because the God revealed in Jesus is not static.
The God we meet in scripture is alive in relationship.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Trinity, not solitary.
Not self-enclosed.
But eternally giving,
receiving, loving, sending.

The doctrine of the Trinity was never meant to be a mathematical puzzle to solve.
It is an attempt—our stumbling human attempt—to say something true about the God we have encountered.

God is relationship.
God is communion.
God is love shared and given.

And if we are made in the imago Dei—the image of God—then we discover who we are not in isolation but in relationship too.

Which means these verbs are not arbitrary religious duties.
They are invitations into God’s own life.

Rejoice. Because joy belongs to God.

Encourage one another. Because God is giver and sustainer.

Live in peace. Because peace is the atmosphere of God’s kingdom.

Go. Because God is always sending love outward.

Make disciples. Not recruits or customers or winners of arguments—but people learning the way of Jesus.

Baptise.
And notice here, this is Trinity Sunday after all, –
Jesus says:
Baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Not names.

Name.

One name.

One life.

One communion of love into which people are welcomed.

Baptism is not simply joining an institution.
It is immersion into the life of the triune God.
Into belonging.
Into relationship.
Into grace.

And then:

Teach them to obey everything I have commanded you.

That word obey can sound severe to modern ears.
But Jesus is not asking for cold compliance.

What has Matthew shown us Jesus commanding?
Love your enemies.
Bless the poor.
Forgive.
Show mercy.
Seek first the kingdom.

Obedience here is learning the practices of love.
Learning how to live God’s life.

And perhaps that matters especially for us gathered here today,
the 5th Sunday of the month,
a gathering from six churches,

not a huge number,
not hugely impressive by the world’s arithmetic,

but enough for now.

Paul wrote to small churches.
Jesus entrusted his mission to a small uncertain group on that mountain.

Small is beautiful.
Small numbers count in the kingdom of God.
Where two or three gather, there I am among them.
The shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to search out the one lost.
God seems remarkably unembarrassed by small beginnings.

And then Matthew ends with what may be the greatest verb of all.
Or perhaps not a verb, but a name.
A promise.
After all the commands:
Go.
Make.
Baptise.
Teach.
There comes this:
And remember…

Or more literally:
Behold.
See this.
Never lose sight of this.

And then the great divine declaration:

I am with you always, to the end of the age.
Not I was.
Not I will be, if you get things right.

I AM.

The eternal verb.
The name God has always spoken to those he loves.
The name spoken to Moses from the burning bush.
The deep grammar of God.

I AM.

And perhaps this is the truth holding all the other verbs together.
We do not rejoice, restore, encourage, go, baptise or teach in order to make God present.
We do these things because God already is present.

Because the great I AM is with us,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit –
not distant,
not abstract,
but the living God drawing near,
inviting us into the holy work of relationship,
the joyful labour of love,
and the shared life of God.

Always.
To the end of the age.

Stressed? Just one thing’s needed

David HerbertLeave a comment

This sermon explores why Luke tell us the story of Martha and Mary. Why did he think it was important for his readers? I always begin my sermon these days by saying how I love preaching that brings scripture back to life, and that I assume those who are listening do too. The gospel for the day is Luke 10:38-42: it’s about Martha’s resentment (and, maybe, our resentments too).

The question I have reading the gospel set for today is: why did Luke think it was so important to tell this  story? It is, after all, a minor incident – the day that Martha had a strop. What is it that Luke wanted his readers to hear? It’s certainly a story that has taken off. Everyone knows about Martha and Mary – even though some of us can’t remember which is which. None of us would be any the wiser were it not for Luke.

It is a small, everyday story that I think we can all relate to.
Who hasn’t invited people into their home only to feel stressed by the so many things that need to be done—getting the meal ready on time, setting the table just so—and then having to hide all that stress, frustration, and tension behind a smiling welcome?

This is a story of two sisters. But really, is Luke telling the story because it is the story of us?

Martha is the older sister.
She’s the one who opens her home to Jesus—not just Jesus, but also his twelve disciples.
That in itself would have raised eyebrows: a household of women welcoming in a group of men.
Where’s the risk assessment for that?
Where’s the safeguarding policy?

There would have been a lot to do to make these guests welcome.
And it seems Martha was the one doing it all.
Luke says she was “distracted with much serving.”
The literal meaning of the Greek is that she was “dragged around”—pulled this way and that by all the tasks.

Meanwhile, Mary is just sitting there, listening to Jesus.

The two sisters are both followers of Jesus. They’re both his friends.
But they are very different.
Martha is a “doer.” Mary is a “listener,” a “dreamer.” The church is made up of both.
If we drew a Venn diagram of this congregation, we’d see some who are hands-on people and others who are heads-in-the-clouds people—and many who are a bit of both.
One isn’t better than the other.

Except when one gets distracted.

And that’s Martha’s problem.
It’s not that her work is unimportant or that her hospitality is wrong.
It’s that she has lost her focus. She’s no longer attending to her guest.
Instead, her gaze has shifted to her sister’s shortcomings.
Instead of speaking to Mary, she complains to Jesus about Mary.

“Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

Martha’s serving has become all about her—her effort, her stress, her sense of injustice. She’s been “dragged around” by her tasks and “put herself in an uproar” (as the Greek word for “troubled” suggests).

The story of Martha and Mary echoes other sibling rivalries in Scripture.
In Genesis, Cain and Abel both make offerings to God, but it’s the younger brother’s offering that’s accepted.
Cain puts himself in such an uproar over the seeming injustice that he murders his brother.

In Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son, it’s the older brother who refuses to join the party when his younger sibling comes home. He too is dragged around by resentment. He can only see the injustice of it all—how hard he’s worked, how little he’s been appreciated.

This is a pattern in Scripture. The first becoming last, the last becoming first. The kingdom of God upending the old order. And here, it’s the younger sister, Mary, who has chosen “the better part.”

Isn’t that how it often is with us? When we get upset, it’s so often because we’ve put ourselves first. Our effort. Our fairness. Our feelings. When that happens, we lose sight of Jesus. We lose sight of the guest.

This isn’t a story about pitting action against contemplation. The church needs both. The problem isn’t Martha’s serving. It’s her distraction.

We’ve all been in Martha’s shoes, trying to do the right thing in the wrong frame of mind. We’ve probably seen it being played out in our church politics, when, for example, a meeting gets distracted, dragged off track by our focus on the shortcomings of others, where we’ve “put ourselves in an uproar”.

Is this why Luke wanted his readers to know this particular story? So that they would hear Jesus’ response.

This is how Jesus responds:

“Martha, Martha…”

When Jesus uses a name twice in Scripture—“Martha, Martha… Saul, Saul… Jerusalem, Jerusalem…”—it’s never in anger. It’s in love, in compassion. Martha has worked herself into an inner storm, and Jesus does what he always does with storms:

“Peace. Be still.”
“You are worried and upset about many things. But only one thing is needed.”

This is a word Martha needed to hear, and it’s a word that’s been needed ever since—by every one of us who’s let worries, distractions, and resentments drown out the voice of Jesus.

The good news is Jesus doesn’t withdraw from Martha because of her distraction. He speaks to her lovingly, inviting her back to the one thing that matters: attending to him.

In Revelation 3:20, we hear Jesus say:

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with them, and they with me.”

Jesus never forces his way in. He waits for us to open the door. That is how he calls on us.

The question for Luke may be how we are when we answer Jesus’s call, when we open our lives to him and make him our guest.
How do we welcome him?
Will we listen, like Mary, who chose the one thing needed?
Or will we get distracted, dragged around by many worries and upset by the shortcomings of others?
In which case, will we listen, like Martha, and hear Jesus’s words to us – words spoken to us in love and compassion, words to calm the storm?

I assume that is what Luke wanted us to hear from his gospel today.

Closing Prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, you stood at the door and knocked,
and we welcomed you in.
Calm the storms of our hearts, still our anxious minds,
and free us from the distractions that drag us away from you,
so we may serve you with joy and without anxiety or resentment.