Adapted from a Father’s Day sermon, June 21, at All Saints Episcopal Church
I want to focus on the instructions Jesus gave his disciples when he sent them out in pairs to proclaim that the kingdom of God has arrived.
Specifically, Jesus tells them that trials and tribulations await them because proclaiming the kingdom invites a certain level of risk and even danger.
He told the twelve he was sending them out like sheep among wolves, and that they must be wise as serpents, so that they may take all advantages to spread the gospel, and, as innocent as doves who do not retaliate against those who reject them.
They were to proclaim peace to those who receive them and shake the dust off their feet as they leave those who do not. Three times Jesus tells the disciples to not fear and to not be afraid. Instead, they are to be emboldened to witness to the truth, even and especially in the face of adversity.
Disciples today, just like the twelve, must not be intimidated by persecution nor fail in our message of love, peace and forgiveness. Jesus meant for all the world to hear and receive. Therefore, we are to tell what we have heard in the dark, in the light. What we have heard whispered, we must shout from the housetops and we are not to be afraid, because God is so intimately aware of you and your presence that even the hairs on your head are counted. And it doesn’t take long for God to count them on some of our heads let me tell you.
Then during these instructions, Jesus changes tone, “Do not think I have come to bring peace, but a sword.”
After 911, I was in a community debate with someone who said Jesus meant this saying as a call to war, but as we read the gospels and more importantly, as we walk with the resurrected and living Jesus Christ, we know that Jesus did not advocate conflict and violence. He offered to the world a new way to understand power. Even if his beloved disciples are ill-treated (that’s they and us) we are to offer no retaliation. Early in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus declares in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God.”
Dividing your family
Then Jesus begins simply doing as he always does, just telling it like it is. “For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.”
If this isn’t so, why in America, are we told every Thanksgiving when we are gathered with family, “Don’t talk about politics or religion?” We all know, some of us more painfully than others, the very real divisions that have arrived between how we worship and how our kids worship or the lack thereof, between their politics and ours.
And then Jesus takes it further, “If you love father or mother more than me, or son or daughter more than me you are not worthy of me.”
When Jesus speaks of tensions and conflict in the family unit, he knows what he is talking about. He knows from his personal experience. In the gospels, we learn that members of his own family had no sympathy for his message; they once tried to restrain him by force when the people were saying, “He is beside himself,” (Mark 3:21). John tells us even his brothers did not believe him (John 7:5).
So, when Jesus said he came not to bring peace but a sword, he is speaking about the sword of righteousness, he is speaking about the effects of his coming. The purpose of his coming will cause division, even within families.
The biker
There was a motorcyclist in my church in Edinburgh, Scotland, at Old St Paul’s Episcopal Church. For months he’d come with his helmet in hand and wearing his cycling gear and sit in the back with an angry look on his face. One Sunday, he found himself drawn to the Eucharist, and after taking it, he gave his life to Christ. He became a stalwart of the church.
Once in a Bible study, he shared with me that, “I grew up in a strong atheist household. My mother and my daughters have now rejected me since I became a Christian. They are angry and think I’ve been brainwashed, and they have cut me off, we don’t communicate anymore.”
I left him with a prayer that his family could be healed, he expressed doubt. I would like to tell you that this story had a happy ending, that all worked out, but it did not. This man paid an enormous price for taking up his cross daily and following Jesus.
A long while ago, I was dating a woman I really liked. She would reluctantly come to church with me. One Sunday, after a particularly uplifting service she asked, “Do you love God more than me?” I told her that if I did not love Christ more that her, I would not know how to love her or anybody else for that matter. The relationship ended before we got to the parking lot. Now you see why I am still single.
Pain for nothing greater
The point is this; allegiance to Jesus might cause conflict not only for you out there, but in your most important relationships even at home, even resulting in expulsion from the family circle. As great as a family can be, nothing is greater on this side of heaven, not even our most personal relationships, than the kingdom of God we are all called to be citizens of.
Even our most important relationships come in second, a strong second to the kingdom of God. We are to lose the totality of ourselves in and for this kingdom. For those who find their life outside the kingdom will ultimately lose it and those who learn to trust, who rightly learn to love, who let go and lose their life for the sake of Jesus and his peaceable kingdom will find it, will find true life! Jesus is definitely not calling for the abandonment of family responsibilities, he is not calling for the reject of love that we are to have in our families, for our loved ones, for our spouses, our partners, and in this church family, for one another.
Jesus is saying that while we are not to ever stop loving our dear ones, we are to hold the kingdom of God nearer and dearer still, so that we may rightly and truly know how to not only have true life in his name – but to love as Jesus loves.
Yet it’s so easy to reject these hard words of Jesus. And one of the things that gets in our way of loving Christ as our all in all, so that we may learn to love ourselves and others rightly is good ole fashion sin.
But as St. Paul tells us, “Do you not know that all who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore, we have been buried with Christ by baptism into his death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”
Newness of life! Who doesn’t need that every morning?
No doubt you’ve heard the story about the golfer who never went to church but one Sunday morning decided to stop in the Episcopal church he passed every Sunday morning on his way to tee off. He walked in during the confession. Not knowing it was a confession of sin, the golfer heard all voices united at the part of the prayer, “We have done those things which we ought not to have done and we have left undone those things which we ought to have done.”
The golfer turned to one of the ushers and said, “Good! Sounds like my kind of people.”
You know, sin is fun or we wouldn’t do it. Tell the truth, when you gossip or find constant fault with others or do any number of larger, egregious sins, you derive something pleasurable from it, or you wouldn’t do it. I guess sin is the gift that keeps on giving.
St Paul tells us through our Baptism in a death like Jesus’ death, we are united to him in a resurrection like his, and that we are dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus! But one of our sins in making idols, and we make them out of material possessions and yes, even out of our relationships and our own families.
Think about it. In baptism, you’re dead. You can’t get resurrected until this is so.
Sometimes, you must die to self to live for Christ. Sometimes, you have to let go to receive, and sometimes you have to surrender all, to die of sorts, to have true life in Christ Jesus. To walk in his all-consuming love, to walk in his unconditional forgiveness and to walk with him so we can walk with others, even those family members who drive us crazy.
It’s Father’s Day and no matter what kind of father you had or relationship you had with him, loving or not so much, you have a heavenly Father who loves you greatly. No matter your relationship with your children or family, you have a church family right here, right now who loves you. So, let’s all go together to the family table of tables, and meet our risen Savior, who waits for us and says to each of us,
“Child, welcome home.” Thanks be to God. Amen!