The Hard Road Before Us (Matthew 7:13-27)

Sunday, June 28, 2020

watch it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYvIxPDvUmg

            “You cannot serve God and wealth” we hear Jesus say in Matthew 6 (v.24), as he confronts us.  His disciples had followed him to a mountain top.  In this Sermon on the Mount, Jesus presents the extremes of discipleship, a calling out of the world.  When we turn our eyes on him and set our hearts on following him, he then teaches the extent of what the call entails.  Love your enemies.  When attacked, turn the other cheek.  Pray for those who persecute you.  Shine your light, your faith, as a city on a hill, a beacon drawing the world to God.

            Now as we come to the final teaching of this sermon, Jesus hits us with stark contrasts.  Much like last week’s emphasis that we must choose God or money as our master, in this final portion, he offers overlapping metaphors of choosing this or that. 

            “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it.  For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it” (v.13-14).  Jesus doesn’t try very hard to sell it.  I once heard a therapist in session say to her struggling client with compassion in her voice, “How can we make your life easier?”  It was as lovely an intro to therapy as I have ever heard.  Who wouldn’t want life to be easier?

            Then along comes Jesus.  He’s not making it easy. To hear him, we have to climb a mountain.    Then he tells us to take the hard road and enter through the narrow gate.  I want the easy road.  I want life to be comfortable, manageable, and stress-free.  He doesn’t really promise any of that.  He says, “Don’t worry.”  But in the same talk he tells us to turn the other cheek and be ready for another blow.  He tells us to depend on God, not money.  And now, we are to intentionally step onto the hard road.  Who does that?

            We do because we trust Jesus and we need Jesus.  But as we do, I offer a two-part warning.  Don’t look over in order to keep track of who is on that easy road headed for the wide gate.  We will drive ourselves crazy if we become envious of neighbors and friends who appear to disregard Jesus and at the same time live happier, easier, more prosperous lives.  Don’t compare your life as a disciple to the lives of people around who aren’t following Jesus.  First, if you pull back the curtain, you’ll surely find that they have deep pain you don’t know about.  Second, if their money, trips, and stuff seem more fulfilling than the Jesus you know in your heart, your probably need to get to him better. 

            The other side of this warning against comparing our lives when we’ve chosen the hard road Jesus lays before us to the lives of people uninterested in Jesus is a warning against pseudo-martyr smugness.  I say ‘pseudo-martyr’ because when we feel ourselves to be superior to people not with Jesus, we want everyone to see that we’ve taken the hard road.  We want to be noticed for our devotion.  Such an attitude corrupts our souls. 

            The closer we get to Jesus, the greater our joy.  It’s a joy we want to share.  We grow close to him through daily disciplines – prayer, Bible reading, quiet times.  We grow close to him when we gather with other Christians, even virtually, and worship together.  We grow close to him when we live in a way that forces us to trust him.  Paradoxically, the weaker we become, the more we are filled with his strength.  The more we share the hurt felt by poor, persecuted people, the more we feel his loving comfort in us.  This kind of joy and love grows in us as we share it.  As we help people see Jesus, we grow close to him, we feel him lift our burdens, and we find ourselves laughing with Heaven’s delight at every step we take on the hard road.

            When we walk that road focused on Jesus, we don’t want to be anywhere else.  When we unsteadily stumble along, constantly looking to the wide, easy roads on either side of us, we find it very hard to move at all. 

            Nick Wellenda has walked a tightrope across the Grand Canyon, between sky scrapers in Chicago, and across the Niagra Falls.  With my fear of heights, I can’t imagine such feats.  In one video, he’s wearing a camara, and we see the angle he sees as he glances toward his feet perilously stepping over a city street hundreds of meters below him.  I got dizzy looking at the video and I was sitting in the comfort of my office.  Wellenda says, “As I was walking along Niagra Falls, there was raging water all around me, mist rising up, and roaring, violent waters beneath me.  But instead of focusing on the problems all around me, I focused on the end.”  Then Wellenda says, “It’s similar to our walk with Christ.  Not all things are easy, but with God all things are possible.”

            We may not be suspended high above waters that would kills us, but we see perils all around.  If our focus is on the problems, the stress, the temptations, and the pain, we’ll soon wander off the hard road bound for the narrow gate, and we’ll be away from the God we need so much.  We need to attend to the traumas and distractions that would upend our lives, but we do this by keeping our focus on Jesus.  In every life circumstance, we stay connect to Jesus, we grow in our relationship with Him, and depend on him more and more.  To follow with our eyes constantly on him, is to stay on the disciple’s path, the hard road.   It is to love the unlovable, help those who need it, and spread joy.  And when we live that way, we discover, whether intentionally or unintentionally, we have helped others find their way to the narrow gate that leads to life in joyous relationship with God the Father. 

            It requires keeping our eyes on Jesus.  Bonhoeffer says,  “If we worry about the dangers that beset us, if we gaze at the road instead of him, … we are already astray.”[i]  He goes on to point out that whereas in Matthew Jesus tells us to walk the hard way and enter by the narrow gate, in John, we hear Jesus tell us he himself is the gate (John 10), and he himself is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14). 

Whether we are thinking about how to react to a global pandemic, or we are struggling with the politics of how our society responds to a pandemic, or we get into conflict with neighbors because their response or their politics are different than our own; in all these scenarios, we keep our eyes on Jesus and he gives joy even as we walk the hard road.  Whether we are opposing racism, or fighting for justice for the poor and the oppressed and the left out, or we yearn for peace in the midst of a politically toxic presidential election cycle; in any of these conversations, we keep our eyes on Jesus and remember that he determines how we treat others and he tells us who we are!  For the disciple, Jesus is in everything – every friendship, every ideology, every activity.

Besides the hard road v. easy road, Jesus offers other contrasts.  Good trees – people who follow his teachings and strive to obey God, bear good fruit; fruit that embodies the mercy and compassion taught in the Sermon on the Mount.  Bad trees – people that serve themselves at the expense of others; the greedy, the racist, the wealthy, the violent bear bad fruit.  They advance themselves, but not God’s agenda.

In addition to likening the disciple life to roads, gates, and trees, he talks about the work of building.  Those who obey Jesus by showing compassion, and giving grace and forgiveness build on solid foundation.  They survive the storms of life.  Those who disregard Jesus live on shifting sand.  Life’s storms so upset these folks they forget who they are.  Pandemics, violent protests, and presidential politics are storms that change souls not tethered to the rock.  We build our lives on the rock, Jesus, and we are his, come what may.

This laser-like focus on Jesus does not mean we have turned our backs on the world; just the opposite.  Next week, we’ll begin a two-part series from Matthew on Jesus’ mission mandate in which we are, in his name, sent into the world.  We go with our eyes on him, determined to help others with their needs and to help them find their way to him. 

The world is everyone who lives apart from God in this time before the end of history and final judgment.[ii]  The world is the tower of Babel run amuck.  The world believes all the lies that if you have enough stuff, if you get your adrenalin fix satisfied, if your team wins or you win, if you have a huge house, and your physical cravings are satiated, then you’ll be happy and happiness is the ultimate end.

When we follow Jesus, we offer the world a better story.  Yes, our story involves hard roads and narrow gates, but on that hard road we discover joy that stays through rainy days.  Jesus is with us right in the middle of the raging storm.  We have as much happiness as the world can offer, but it is different, deeper, and lasting.  It is not dependent on circumstance, and can even grow in the midst of turmoil because our Lord rises above the storm and bring us with Him. 

Hear this better story, the Jesus story; learn it, choose it, tell it, live it.  It is the road that leads to life and it stand open before us.

AMEN

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[i] D. Bonhoeffer (1963), The Cost of Discipleship, MacMillan Publishing Company (New York), p.212.

[ii] S. Hauerwas (2006), Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible: Matthew, Brazos Press (Grand Rapids), p.87.

A Spiritual Discipline for 2020 – Renounce Worry

“It’s a problem-free phil-o-so-phy …”!  Disney fans know this!  “Hakuna Matata” from The Lion King.  It’s a wonderful song, and it may even help me remember the spiritual discipline to which I have committed.  ‘Hakuna Matata’ can work as a mnemonic as long as I also remember that I am not actually committing to a “worry-free philosophy.”  Such a way of seeing isn’t really possible, I don’t believe.

               When I talk about seeing without being anxious and living worry-free, I am talking about a spiritual discipline rooted in the way of Jesus.  “Do not worry about your life.  Do not worry about tomorrow” (Matthew 6:25a, 34a).  Rather, “strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (v.33).  In His commentary on Matthew, theologian Stanley Hauerwas insists that these instructions from Jesus only make sense when they remain connected to who Jesus is.

               In other words, I commit to these words of Jesus and to refuting worry not as an act of my will, but instead as an expression of my dependence on him.  All spiritual disciplines lead to the disciple reiterating her or his dependence on Jesus.  Why can I actually be free of worry?  Because of who Jesus is and because I remain in close connection with him.

               Thus, refuting worry as a spiritual discipline will always include prayer; it will always include study; it always includes worship; it will always include evangelistic conversations.  Why?  I remain in close connection to Jesus through prayer, study, worship, and evangelistic endeavors.  Refuting worry is not a philosophy.  It is a declaration that Jesus Christ is Lord in the New Age.  And furthermore, with his coming in human flesh, with his death and resurrection, the new age has started.

               We live in the days when the old age, the age of sin and death, and the new age, the age of the eternal kingdom of God overlap.  Following Jesus, we lean in to the new age. 

               Wednesday, February 26, Lent begins.  That night we will have an Ash Wednesday worship service to begin our church’s journey to the cross.  I pray that my personal life will be define by this theme: “Fear not!  Jesus is Lord.”  During Lent, I encourage all Jesus-followers to prayerfully examine their lives and to commit to spiritual disciplines will draw each one’s life into alignment with the way of Jesus. 

“Hillside Discipleship” (Matthew 5:1-12)

Rob Tennant, Hillside Church, Chapel Hill, NC

Sunday, January 5, 2020

            Happy New Year!  Here we are at the start of our new venture.  December 15, we celebrated the launch of our new church with a new name: Hillside.  The service was beautiful and joy-filled.  I loved celebrating with you, my church family.

            Then we moved into Christmas.  Our Christmas Eve worship was holy – that’s the word for it.  We had guests, we had regular attendees and members, and together we glorified Jesus, our Savior.  I hope you had a happy celebration entering into the New Year! 

            This past Friday, we celebrated the life of one of our beloved church members.  God called Pat Antonevitch home.  We had her funeral with her family. She is at rest in Jesus, awaiting resurrection.

            Now we turn the page.  2020 has started.  Diets, resolutions, hopes and dreams – it’s a new year.  Are you with us?  Are you interested in climbing the hill?

            Note with tenacious attentiveness the opening to Matthew chapter 5.  Veteran Bible readers especially need to take care.  If you are unfamiliar with the Bible, you may have a great advantage as we move into Matthew.  Later this year, we’ll devote more concentrated attention to Matthew 5, 6, and 7.  This morning we simply take the opening verses as a call of God into the life He wants us to live.  We could step toward answering this call at any time of the year, but with it being January and us taking a new name, the timing is especially poignant.

            Matthew 5 opens what is known as the Sermon on the Mount, one of the most recognized and commented upon blocks of teaching from Jesus.  The Gospel of Matthew is organized around five discourses of Jesus, this being the first.  Veteran Bible readers might come into this supposing they know what it’s all about.  If that’s you, I don’t say you’re wrong.  Maybe you know this material very well.  Don’t allow that familiarity to get in the way of you hearing Jesus with fresh ears.  In this often-read passage, He has something new to say to us. 

            Are you ready for something new from God?  This applies to all who are hearing the Sermon on the Mount for the first time.  This applies for anyone who has read it a thousand times.  Are you ready this time to hear God’s new, fresh word for us?  Are you read to climb up the hill side?

            “When Jesus saw the crowds,” it begins, “he went up the mountain.”  The crowds had seen him.  We followed Matthew the story-teller out to the Jordan River where John the Baptist was baptizing.  When Jesus got baptized, the heavens opened up.  A voice from heaven said, “This is my Son.”  Crowds gathered around John saw this and heard it.  They stopped watching John and fixed their eyes on Jesus. 

            He then went out to the desert, way out in the deserted wastelands.  The crowds didn’t follow him out there.  That voice-from-heaven-at-the-baptism trick was cool but they wanted no part of the desert and fasting.  Fasting for 40 days?  No thank you.  Jesus did that on his own.  He faced Satan on his own. 

            But, when he came back and started preaching all around Galilee, and he was an awesome preacher, the crowds came back around.  They loved listening to great speakers and they especially loved it when the hot new guy challenged the religious establishment and the tongue-tied scribes and Pharisees had no answer.  Jesus went around Galilee healing people of leprosy and curing blindness.  He drove demons out of people and cured people of epilepsy (4:24). 

            Man, word spread!  The crowds around Jesus got bigger and bigger.  Miracles? We want to see that!  Great preaching?  We want to hear that!  Voices from heaven?  We have to be there for that!  Go out and fast for 40 days in the desert?  There are wild animals out there.  You have to search for water out there.  You have sleep on the ground and it gets really cold in the desert at night.  Yeah, the crowds were all for the miracles and captivating sermons and heavenly happenings.  The crowds said no thanks to the scary, uncomfortable, hard stuff. 

            Who wants to climb the hill?

            “When Jesus saw the crowds,” he separated from them.  Matthew says, “He went up the mountain.”  And he sat down.  He had already called the fishing brothers, Peter and Andrew, and the other fishing brothers, James and John (4:21).  They left their fishing business, their father – they left it all to follow Jesus.  When he climbed up on the hill, they followed.  When he sat down, he assumed the posture of a Jewish rabbi preparing to teach his followers.  Matthew writes that his disciples came to him (5:1b). 

            We don’t know who all that was.  We can assume Peter and Andrew.  We can assume James and John.  Matthew has already let us know they immediately left their nets and boats.  They traded the fishing life for the life of going wherever Jesus went.  They climbed up the hill with him.  But Matthew doesn’t limit the description to these four.  We know there were more.  There will be 12 disciples specified at the beginning of chapter 10.  Throughout the Gospel we will meet others positively disposed to following and obeying Jesus.

            Also, the crowd will continue to be present gawking at the miracles, laughing when Jesus embarrasses the religious leaders, and calling for his head, when they fear the Roman authorities.  The Sermon on the Mount begins in chapter 5 with Jesus walking away from the crowd to go up the mountain, the hill side. 

It ends at the end of chapter 7.  Matthew lets us know that in fact, crowds did, slowly but surely, make their way up the mountain to hear Jesus.  They were astounded by his teaching (7:28).  By the beginning of chapter 8, masses of people trailed after him for any variety of reasons.  Read Matthew.  Jesus didn’t make discipleship easy.  He was watching the crowd.  He wanted to see who would step out, off the easy path.  He wanted to see who give up everything to follow him.

That’s what we want to find out this year in our church.  Who wants to follow Jesus?  We say that at Hillside church, we follow Jesus, love others, and share hope.  We can only give love and share hope if it comes from the Holy Spirit at work in us, speaking through us.  We will only be filled with the Spirit if we abandon confidence in earthly systems and all notions of power and security we previously held.  We have to be absolutely God-dependent.  He has to be Lord of every aspect of our lives. 

The great German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer described this separation from the crowd to discipleship, from a confidence in the world to dependence on God as the difference between cheap grace and costly grace.  Bonhoeffer writes,

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession. … Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the Gospel [and the God] which must be [actively] sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which [we] must knock [and knock and knock.  Sometimes we have to climb a hill just to knock on the door.]

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.  It is costly because it cost a man his life.  It is grace because it gives us the only true, eternal life.[i]

            The essence of Bonhoeffer’s message is this.  Following Jesus requires a total life change and demands that we be all-in.  The crowds give a loud “whoop-whoop” when they see a miracle.  Yeah, you go Jesus.  The disciple stops what he or she is doing, climbs the hill, and sits to listen as long as Jesus teaches.  The crowd, flocks to Jesus when they think there’s something in it for them.  The disciple re-orients his life around the words of Jesus even when doing so requires a step of faith. 

            The first step is to climb the hill.  We stop the maddening flow of our lives, step out of the frenetic pace of the world around us., and don’t return until we are driven by the dictates of Jesus.  We will live in the world, but we’ll do it on his terms.  Only when we have surrendered  to him are we ready to come down from the hill, step into the world, and speak truth, give love, and spread hope.

            What follows in the Sermon on the Mount is “not a list of requirements, but rather a description of the life of a people gathered around Jesus.”[ii]  Jesus does not replace the 10 commandments with the beatitudes.  His message in the Sermon is this: here’s what life in the new age – the age to come and the age now here – is like. 

            We will begin this year going throughout the Bible to find those places where God gives a special message, a life-forming word, on a mountain or on a hillside.  As a congregation, we will be formed by this life-giving hillside words.  Later in the year, we’ll go in depth in the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and the other sermons he gives in Matthew.

            There was a definite separation, but the crowd wasn’t cut off from Jesus.  He went up the hill to see who would step out of the crowd, sit down, and listen to him; and then, stand up as his follower.  That’s our invitation to begin 2020.  Would you step out of the crowd, climb the hillside, and discover life as a follower of Jesus?

AMEN

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[i] D. Bonhoeffer (1995), The Cost of Discipleship, a Touchstone Book (New York), p.44-45.  Originally published in 1934.

[ii] Stanley Hauerwas (2006), Brazos Theological Commentary: Matthew, Brazos Press (Grand Rapids), p.61.

Follow Jesus ... a Lenten Path

            “Jesus went out and he saw a tax collector named Levi, and he said to him, “Follow me” (Luke 5:27).  Christians make it their life’s work to follow Jesus.  Christian pastors preach that following Jesus is the business of the church.  The church exists to help people be devoted followers of Jesus Christ.  The calling of Levi in Luke 5 is one of many passages that lead Christians to insist growing as disciples of Jesus is the purpose of life.

            Why?  Why did Jesus call specific individuals to follow him?  Why do Bible readers interpret the call to discipleship experienced by James, John, Peter, and the rest as a prelude to the calling of all humanity to discipleship?  Christians believe all people are invited by God to follow Jesus.  But why is following Jesus so important?

            “When the days drew near for him to be taken up,” says Luke 9:51, “Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem.”  “Taken up” means the crucifixion.  Where it says Jesus “set face,” it means he was determined from that point onward to journey to Jerusalem.  Nothing would stop him.  Everything in Luke’s gospel from 9:51 to chapter 23 is built upon Jesus’ journey to the cross.  He was determined to go to the place where he knew a brutal death by crucifixion awaited him.  Why?

                Why is Jesus so intent that all people become his followers?  Why was he set on going to his death?     The key to answering both questions is Luke 19:41-44:

⁴¹ As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, "If you even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.  Indeed, the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up ramparts around you, and hem you in on every side.  They will crush you to the ground, you and your children with you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God."  

Jesus wept over the city because they were lost in sin.  Of that city, he said,

³⁷ “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing” (Matthew 23:37)!

Jerusalem reject God’s prophets, thus rejecting God’s word.  When we sin, we reject God’s way for us to live and choose our own way.  Jesus desperately wants to rescue us from our sin, but at least in the case of Jerusalem, the week before the crucifixion, the people rejected God’s offer of salvation.  That’s why the cross was necessary.  Sin brings death and eternal separation from God.  Jesus took on himself both our death and our alienation from God when he died on the cross in our place.  That’s why the cross is so important; it’s why he set his face to go to Jerusalem.

            The only way Jesus’ death on the cross become affective in our lives is when we put our trust in him and give our lives to him, acknowledging him as our Lord.  Why is crucial that we follow Jesus?  God wants a relationship with us in which we are His sons and daughters and he is our Father and Lord.  That relationship comes when we follow Jesus.  When we confess our sins, repent, and acknowledge Jesus as Lord, we are baptized in the Holy Spirit and adopted as sons and daughters of God. 

We are called to follow because God loves us.  But we cannot accomplish discipleship by our own spiritual will power.  We sin, we hurt God, we hurt others, and we hurt ourselves.  So Jesus came to cover our sins and effect transformation in us.  Jesus died on the cross because God loves us. 

These are the basic elements of the God-human story.  During Lent, we rehearse this story, retell it, walk in it, and discover it anew.  I have been a Christian for 38 years and am diving to greater depths as I go through the story this year, in some ways as this were my first time in Lent.  I hope you are learning what it means to follow Jesus and as you do, I hope you see the cross.  As you see the cross, I pray you will see your life, covered by Christ. 

Because God loves us, we follow and learn continuously learn new, richer ways to love Him and each other.