watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amNkGTPiSlY
Sunday, July 12, 2020
I’m going to tell you about my
dating life before I met Candy and we married and life was all about following
Jesus, being a pastor, and becoming a family.
Before all that, I was a single.
Life was about following Jesus, most definitely. As I followed Jesus, I went out on dates,
including one with an activist.
She worked for a conservative
women’s organization dedicated to fighting abortion. I took her to my favorite restaurant in
Arlington. We talked as we perused the
menus, but the entire conversation stayed on one topic – the effort to stop
abortion. After we ordered, I said,
“Well, when you aren’t working, what do you like to do for fun?” She looked at me earnestly, and said with
passionate energy, “I go to anti-abortion rallies all over the country.” In my head, I thought to myself, ‘Dear Jesus,
she’s not for me and I’m not for her.
When will this date be over?’
This beautiful woman lived within a
frame – the fight against abortion. I
lived within a frame too, but a different frame. I have opposed abortion and still do, but I
have additional interests. My frame was
following Jesus, and falling in love. I propose that every one of us sees the
world through colored lenses, every one of us holds a worldview, and every one
of us lives life within a framework.
Without choosing, we end up in default frameworks:
· A framework dictated by
someone’s idea of what American is.
· A framework imposed by our
professions.
· A framework inherited from
our families.
· A framework that says, “I
am southern and I need to explain to others what it means to be southern.”
· Race-identity
frameworks.
We
will all see through lenses, hold a worldview, and live in a framework, and if
we don’t think about it, our lenses, worldviews, and frames are inherited or
imposed on us. But we can choose the lenses
through which we will look; the worldview definition; and we can choose which
frame’s boundaries will determine our limits.
We can choose our framework, and Jesus insists we do so.
Chapter
10 is one of five sermons from Jesus Matthew uses to organize his Gospel. These
sermons, call to mind, the foundational teaching in the Torah, the first five
books of the Bible. Matthew 10 is the
missionary discourse. In it we see the
interpretive frame in which Jesus insisted we must stay in order to follow him.
Whatever
we do in life, we do it in this frame.
How we interact with people, do our jobs, hold our relationships, and
even how we play on days off is determined by the interpretive frame Jesus
insists is absolute for his followers. A
disciple of Jesus lives within this frame.
We are called to be disciples of Jesus.
In
the verses just prior to the interpretive frame, Jesus says,
34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have
not come to bring peace, but a sword.
35 For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
36 and one’s foes will be members of
one’s own household.
37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me;
and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;
He
turns a son against his father, a daughter against her mother? To follow Jesus is to turn completely away
from family? Can this be what Jesus
means?
Remember,
later in the New Testament we come across a letter entitled James, said
to be written not by the brother of John and one of the 12. This other James, also mentioned in Acts and
in Galatians, is probably the younger half-brother of Jesus, a son of Joseph
and Mary. There’s the letter Jude,
written by another half-brother of Jesus.
His siblings became his followers after the resurrection.
Remember
Jesus’ words on the cross, in John 19.
As he died, he entrusted care of his mother to the beloved
disciple. Jesus’ actions show how much
he loved and included his family in his movement. But his words at the end of Matthew 10,
shockingly, say something else. What’s
he getting at?
Through
the interpretive frame, we make sense of the rest of his words. In the interpretive frame, we live our
lives. Verses 38-39: “Whoever does not
take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and
those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” We have to take up our cross and lose our
lives. Another way of saying this is we
deny the self. We do it from gratitude
and out of love for Him. Love for Jesus
and absolute devotion to Jesus creates such a magnetic pull in our lives,
everything else is subsumed.
What
sense does it makes for Jesus to impose the burden of taking up the cross in
chapter 10? He didn’t experience the
cross until the end of the story. All
the listeners, including all who wanted to follow him, knew what the Roman
cross was – a humiliating tool of public execution designed to drive home the
subjugation of the people. See these
crosses and know you live under Rome’s heel.
In
taking up our daily crosses, we defy Rome and resist oppressive governmental or
social powers, regardless of what they do us.
In taking up our cross, we step into the frame Jesus has set around
us. We love our neighbors and our enemies. We pray for and serve those who oppose
us. We feed the needy, encourage the
depressed, make space for the lonely and rejected, and tell the good news of
life in Christ. Our frame leads us to
this countercultural way of living. In
approaching life this way, we tell everyone, We are His.
In
our interpretive frame, we carry the cross, lose our lives, and die to self.
Paul says it this way. “To live is
Christ and to die is gain. For his sake,
I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish” (Philippians
1:21; 3:8). When he chose to follow
Jesus, He gave up the life in which he was quickly rising in the ranks of
Jerusalem religious intelligentsia. He counted those accolades that Pharisees
would work their entire lives to gain as rubbish. Serving Christ was everything for Paul, as it
is for every true disciple.
What
are willing to count as rubbish compared to living in Christ? We should love our families, but our families
cannot be more important than Jesus. If
someone’s family matters than the Lord, then family, a good thing, becomes an
idol.
Some
people aspire to be a scholarship athlete or have a career as a dancer or
musician. These highly competitive
ventures demand commitment from those intrepid enough to try. Even something so all-consuming cannot
command more of us than Jesus, if we are to be his disciples. We are called to be his disciples.
What
determines life is as it should be? Career
advancement? Physical fitness? Relationships? In Christ, we die to these good things. We lose that life. We gain Christ. Marriage, career, and achievement each conforms
to the frame: life in Christ; the advancement of the Kingdom. For the disciples all arenas of life are made
to fit into the frame of discipleship.
We
should be suspicious of any movement, protest, politics or idea where
Christianity is bent or redefined to fit the ideology instead of the individual
being conformed to the way of Christ. Aggressively
vocal activists sometimes demand that Christianity to fit their needs.
I
am talking about activists, writers and protestors who attempt remake Christianity
in order to make it more palatable to their vision. Part of my understanding of Jesus and the
coming of the Kingdom is the promise of justice for the oppressed, victims of
structural racism and generational prejudice, so I have marched in protest. Marching, for me was an act of
discipleship. In doing it, my mind was
on Christ as I strove to obey and glorify him and draw others to Him. What I
have had not heard enough is the leaders of movements saying, “to live is
Christ and to die is vain.” How many activists, thinkers or writers understand
that we must submit to our Lord, Jesus?
The
mantra of our day is “be true to yourself.”
How does that sound next to “those who find their life will lose it and
those who lose their life for my sake will find it?” Be true to yourself is not a Biblical
idea. Jesus is truth. In the waters of baptism, we die and are
buried. Then we are made new in
Christ.
Following
Jesus, and sharing his entire Gospel is the frame in which we must live when we
emerge from the water. So many
ideologies and movements vie to define us; we must die to all of it. When we live in Christ, we can protest
abortion and we can protest violence against black people. In him, we can insist that black lives matter
and white supremacy must end. In him we
can have love-filled, robust theological conversations about sexuality, gender
and relationships. These conversations won’t always end in agreement, but we
are united in him.
Imagine
your life, the very core of who you are.
See the interpretive frame. What
does your life look like when you die and every loyalty you hold dear dies to
be reborn in the framework of discipleship?
Is following Jesus worth it? He
presented that choice to his followers in Matthew’s gospel. He presents it to us. Imagine it.
Will you go all-in with Jesus?
AMEN
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