June 14, 2020 Sermon "Are We Living in the Time of Christ?"

Matthew 9 35-10 23

                Day and night.  Heaven and hell.  Good and bad.  We seem to get the full sweep of one into the other in our passage today.  Jesus is doing what Jesus does, “teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness.”  “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few” is his observation.  So he deploys the disciples, the twelve are sent out to do as Jesus did.  And they were given impressive abilities.  Jesus “…gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness.”  Then, the disciples are enumerated, including Judas Iscariot, “the one who betrayed him” before deployment.

                So far so good, Jesus has been doing well, the disciples are equipped to do well.  The mission is focused, among the Jews, not the Samaritans or the Gentiles-well, not yet “go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  They are charged to do works of power, “Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.”  This strikes me as being an internship because they are not being paid for anything.

                The mission is pretty straight forward.  Stay where you are welcome, place your peace on the house, if they don’t listen, take the peace back, and shake the dust off your feet from them.  Don’t let them get you down.

                This is the daytime, the heavenly portion, the good part of the story.  Now it slides as Jesus switches to “worst case scenario” mode. 

                Because if that town doesn’t listen to the words that the disciples share, they are more cursed than the two most cursed cities in the entire bible, Sodom and Gomorrah.  We don’t need to review why they were cursed, just that fire and brimstone was the resultant punishment.  Want to be reminded of it?  The Dead Sea is where they were located.  The single most visible result of God’s wrath is laid out before the disciples as getting an easier pass with God than the ones who reject what they teach.

                Because this is not an easy mission.  The disciples are the sheep, those people are the wolves.  The disciples have to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.  Innocent as doves, I get that metaphor, but wise as serpents?  Jesus really dips into the Scriptures for that one.  Genesis 3:1, Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made.  This is the verse that leads into the serpent deceiving Eve and Adam.  Wiser than the creature that made Jesus’ mission necessary…  But that’s not the conclusion of what we know about the serpent.  When God is handing out punishment for original sin, he Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this,
   cursed are you among all animals and among all wild creatures;
upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat
   all the days of your life.

But be wise as serpents while you are out there. 

                Why watch out for those people? Beware of them, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues; and you will be dragged before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them and the Gentiles.  Arrested, flogged, dragged before governors and kings.  That is what happens to Jesus.  Arrested, flogged, dragged before Pontius Pilate and Herod, king in Galilee.  And how did that end?  Crucifixion.

                Once in custody, Jesus’ advice is thus “When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.”  One of the most eloquent testimonials of the Spirit of the Father speaking through an apostle comes in Acts 7, vss. 2-52.  A deacon of the church has been arrested, dragged before the high priests.  And he opens his heart and speaks such a moving story of the power of Jesus Christ down through the Old Testament.  The down side is that deacon was Stephen, who was subsequently stoned to death, the first martyr of the church.

                Now we get down into the worst of it, verse 21 “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name.  Oh yeah, and if you fail, well, those who endure to the end will be saved…”

                So here’s what you can expect:  when persecuted in one town, flee to the next.  And here is the reality, you will NOT get to all the towns before I come again.

                Let me tell you something, this passage was NOT in the brochures when I was getting ready to attend Seminary.

                This entire passage is something that starts so promising.  There are people out there who are desperate to know the love of Jesus Christ, and there are not enough people to share that joy and wonder.  But it is going to cause such divisiveness that children will hand over their parents to be killed. 

                How can something so wonderful end so horribly? 

                We could ask the same question about our nation right now.  I am talking about the relationship between police and the African American community in the wake of George Floyd’s death.  I am talking about the protests that have rocked this nation.  About the President tweeting that looters could be shot.  About video of a white man in gas mask and dark clothing breaking windows in an area of protest to fuel the fire that looting is going on, where it wasn’t-not in that instance.  Makes one question how many other times.  About peaceful protests outside the White House that are broken up by chemical irritants and projectile munitions…but NOT tear gas and rubber bullets mind you, so that the President could walk to a photo op at a church across Lafayette Park.  About national guardsmen, about police in riot gear, about white Americans using their bodies as human shields for their African American brothers and sisters? 

                What is a Christian response to this?  Wade into the middle of it with the message of love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ and you can expect arrest, flogging, even death itself, but salvation is to those who endure to the end.

                Wait…what? 

                What about sides?  Well, I was shown something on Facebook, a posting where we were asked not to judge cops by the uniform, but by the individual.  How about not judging a man by the color of their skin and pinning his neck till he dies, but as individuals?  A 911 call about a man who passed a counterfeit $20 that began the series of events that led to his death.

                Racism is endemic in this nation and it sees its worst excesses in law enforcement.  And the reason it sees its worst excesses in law enforcement is because it runs counter to everything a law enforcement officer should be standing for.  Is every cop bad?  Of course not.  Is every African American a criminal?  Of course not.  But that isn’t the way we are acting as a nation.  Law enforcement officers are first and foremost peace officers.  But the peace is not ringing out.

                When we read verses like these in Matthew, we, in this day and age and nation, have no real concept of what it was like “out there” for Christians.  We are so comfortable, so privileged, so free to do what we want, when we want, how we want.  Can we even fathom that the daily life of the African American community fits the warnings of what Jesus tells his disciples that they might be facing out there.  And the disciples have the option of renouncing the faith.  It is a little more difficult to renounce one’s birth.

                So what do we do about it?  I am given to understand that back in the days of the Civil Rights movement, my predecessor here at First Presbyterian went south to join in the protests against the racism of the whites. 

                I have to admit, I have not seen much in the way of connections being drawn between the Civil Rights movement and the protests happening today.  But the fight that started there has never had a satisfactory conclusion. 

                I am not going to join a protest and I am not going to advocate that others go out and protest.  I think that is a highly personal decision and I commend and respect those who make that choice and I pray that their time will be peaceful and that they will remain living examples of Jesus in the peace that they live out.

                But I am going to say, from the pulpit, that the message that Jesus sent his disciples to share is exactly the message that we need to be sharing out there, in the middle of all of this.  

                And what is the message?  The Kingdom of Heaven has come near!  And I don’t of a message that is a harder sell right now.  I don’t know about you, but I associate this message with a crazy man who has this printed out on a body-length billboard, walking up and down in the streets when there is word that another asteroid is in the range of striking earth.  He’s talking about end times stuff.  And these protests feel like end times stuff.  Is the nation ripping itself apart?

                But the reality is that the nearness of the Kingdom of Heaven has been since Jesus sent his disciples out, that it has never moved out once again.

                Is this moment when we have to look around ourselves and we have to stand up and say that until everyone enjoys the nearness of the Kingdom of Heaven as much as we do, then the work is not done.  Until the day when I can walk down the street and see a person of color and know that is my brother or my sister and until the day that person of color can walk down the street and know that the person in the uniform in the cop car is there to serve and protect, until the day when the foundation of that reality, the love and forgiveness of our Lord Jesus Christ, has opened every heart and touched every life, only then can I take a minute and congratulate myself on a job well done.

                Jesus was out there among the harassed and helpless, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and sickness.  How about this, the pathology of a crazy person who likes to hurt other people, we call that mental illness and our call is to see to their treatment, according to this verse. 

                Why does Jesus send his disciples out?  Because there are not enough laborers to help the harassed and helpless, the people who are looking for an answer about why life is violent and destructive and is there in fact a better way?  I would suggest that every disciple in the church take a look around, find the harassed, find the helpless, and saddle up.

                I tell my children to respect the police because that is the right thing to do.  I don’t know how it feels to tell my children to respect the police out of fear for their own lives if they choose not to.  And that is a privilege that every parent of every color should be able to share with their children.  And until we can, the work of Christ is NOT done. 

                There is a reason why Jesus dips into very dark and scary language when he speaks to his disciples about what will happen when they really get out there to share the Word.  Because that is really what is going to happen.  Because they are digging into the dark underbelly of racism and preconception and privilege and two thousand years of what was considered acceptable behavior because the powerful said it was and they are called to tear it down until every person has the same love, the same justice, where privilege is surrendered for something even more powerful, equality, and we will truly be able to proclaim that we love our neighbors as ourselves.

                Wait a minute?  Am I talking about them or am I talking about us?  A Jew gets beaten to death by a Roman soldier because he fails to carry his gear for a mile-something soldiers could demand of locals.  An African American dies because of a knee on his neck over a questioned twenty dollar bill.  Yes them.  Yes us.

                When we get into it, then we will understand what it really means that the kingdom of heaven is near.  And we will be able to greet Jesus when he steps back on the earth and know that we have endured to the end.  And we will not simply have given lip service to the faith we proclaim and the Lord we love, but we will have used the power of the Spirit of the Lord to truly make a difference.

                It seems to me that every time Jesus mentions the peace that comes from our Lord, it comes after his return.  Then are all things made new.  Until that time, we are sheep.  But we have gotten so comfortable, we do not even see that anymore.  But we won’t know the truth, that Jesus is the Good Shepherd, and we are His sheep, until we dare to get out there among the wolves with all our fellow sheep.  There are the harassed and the helpless.  There are the ones who need the message of Good News of Christ Jesus.  And we are called to be the disciples to deliver it-no matter what.

Amen.