DO NOT BE AFRAID

SCRIPTURE READING: Matthew 10:24-39


Chippie the parakeet never saw it coming. One second he was peacefully perched in his cage. The next he was sucked in, washed up, and blown over.

The problems began when Chippie's owner decided to clean Chippie's cage with a vacuum cleaner. She removed the attachment from the end of the hose and stuck it in the cage. Then the phone rang, and she turned to pick it up. She'd barely said "Hello" when sssopp! Chippie got sucked in.

The bird owner gasped, dropped the phone, turned off the vacuum, and opened the bag. There was Chippie, still alive, but stunned.

Since the bird was covered with dust and soot, she grabbed him and raced to the bathroom, turned on the faucet, and held Chippie under the running water. Then, realizing that Chippie was soaked and shivering, she did what any compassionate bird owner would do...she reached for the hair dryer and blasted the pet with hot air.

Poor Chippie never knew what hit him.

A few days after the trauma, the reporter who had initially written about the event contacted Chippie's owner to see how the bird was recovering. "Well," she replied, "Chippie doesn't sing much anymore, he just sits and stares."

It's not hard to see why. Sucked in, washed up, and blown over...that's enough to steal the song from the stoutest heart. (Mark Cleaveland, Rushsylvania, OH)

Sucked in, washed up, blown over – no doubt we’ve all had days, weeks, even years when we felt like that. No doubt we’ve all had times when we’ve felt like the life-giving energy was stolen from our very lives; when the song of love, hope and faith was stolen from our hearts.

There are times when we struggle with the demands of daily life and how to meet them. And then there are the times when we’ve given everything we’ve got and still failed in our attempts to meet our goals, to live up to ours or others expectations, times when we’ve lost the game and feel like we’ve lost everything.

There are times when we are so overcome with fear that we feel paralyzed. We may be blown over with a fear of the future and what it will bring to our lives – especially in light of an unstable economy, rising fuel and food costs, and overwhelming mortgage rates. We may live in fear of losing our jobs with the amount of corporate downsizing, or right-sizing, as they like to say. And those of us who face shrinking or non-existent pensions, fear we may not have enough to live on to pay for the necessary care we may need at end of life. We may fear of an impending event in the present. We may fear, or maybe even harbor regret, over what may have happened in the past.

Then there are the times when we have been separated from those we love by the call to go to distant places for education, for work, to answer the call to serve to others, to serve country in this time of war. And, no doubt, when we are separated from those we love by death, it feels as if the life-blood has been drained from us and our hearts will never sing again.

No doubt the early disciples of Jesus also felt sucked in, washed up and blown over by challenges of their commission to proclaim the good news to all. Shouting God’s word of love from the rooftops was not exactly met with a welcoming response. Their words were often met with extreme opposition and raging resistance, especially by the lost sheep of the house of Israel, the local Jewish communities. There were times and places where their very presence was shunned. In fact, there were many times and circumstances where the early disciples feared for their lives. It was discouraging, to say the least.

And, no doubt the disciples’ call to cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers and cast out demons, without so much as accepting one denarii in return for their efforts, had to take a bit of a toll on them, don’t you think?

The early followers of Jesus needed to hear a word of hope, courage and strength. They needed a pep talk. It is precisely in such moments and circumstances when we feel fearful, when we are discouraged and completely worn out by life’s challenges, moments when we feel isolated and alone, that we too need to hear a word of hope, a word of encouragement, and a word of strength. In such moments, we, too, need a pep talk.

How many of you have ever received a pep talk? Maybe it was from one of your parents, or a teacher, your team’s coach, or even a close friend. Looking back, do you remember the circumstances facing you? Do you remember what they said to you? Most of all, do you remember the way you felt before, during and after the pep talk?
When I think back to the various times I have heard and heeded the pep talks I’ve been fortunate enough to receive over the years, I rarely remember the words that we spoken, but rather I remember how I felt both before, during and after. I remember how those individual’s words spoke to me, how they transformed me, and how their words brought comfort, strength and hope to my life in those moments of time when I was sucked in, washed up and blown over by life’s challenges. Those pep talks pulled me out of the angst and despair and set me upright, planting my feet firmly on and in the path of faith.

Yet, Jesus’ words to the disciples captured here in Matthew’s gospel offer a strange kind of pep talk. They are hardly a Hallmark greeting card of comfort and support. His words are a strange mixture of caution and hope. They are more challenging than uplifting. (Kate Huey)

Jesus knows first-hand what it is like to face resistance, opposition and even angry mobs of people. His ministry was clearly not welcomed by many people, especially the leaders in the Jewish synagogues. Thus, the message he gives assures his disciples, all of them, that anyone who chooses to follow in his footsteps can count on similar treatment by synagogue leaders and members of the community. “A disciple is not above the teacher, nor the slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they malign those of his household.” (Matthew 10:24:25)

A disciple of Jesus could expect such treatment even from members of their own family. A disciple of Jesus should not be surprised when family chooses to separate themselves from the disciple and the disciples’ way of life. In fact, as David Bartlett says, “Matthew’s Gospel was written in part to encourage synagogue members to risk separation from family and friend in order to follow Jesus. ‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 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; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.’” (Matthew 10:34-36)

In the ancient world family was everything. You could count on family to love you, protect you, to give you your sense of identity, and to give you your sense of security. Thus, to make the choice to pledge your loyalty to Jesus and Jesus’ values over against loyalty to your family and family values was extreme and extremely dangerous. Fred Craddock, a well-known preacher and professor, has a different take on this passage. He says this: “Jesus gave his call for loyalty over against the strongest, not the weakest, claim a person otherwise knew, the claim of family love. Jesus never offered himself as an alternative to the worst, but to the best in society.” “Perhaps,” as Kate Huey has said, “Jesus wanted to touch on the most basic, most heart-connected part of human life, and then to teach us that even deeper, even more important, even more powerful than that, are the love of God and the demands of faith.” Jesus wanted us to understand the claim God has on us first and foremost. We are God’s children first. We are followers of Christ first. God has claimed and named us first and foremost. Even before we were ever born into our earthly families, we were created in the mind and heart of God. Our very identity is a child of God.

“But claiming that identity, and living faithfully into it has consequences in a world of empire and fear, in the first century and the twenty-first century as well.” (Kate Huey)

In the midst of all the possibilities of fear and loss – impending opposition, resistance, loss of respect, family, security, well-being, their very lives – Jesus’ words offer his disciples assurance and promise. They are assured of God’s unending love and appreciation for them and are promised life beyond this earthly life – life more abundant than they can imagine; a life in which all that they have sacrificed for the sake of the gospel will be restored. God loves the disciples more than we can imagine, more than we have even experienced in the life of our families.

All of us are named, claimed and called by God to be Jesus’ disciples as well. And the cost of discipleship can be equally great. Our world is different than that of first-century Christianity. The consequences for following in Jesus’ footsteps may not cost us our lives, but they may cost us our way of life and even our livelihood, for the choices and decisions we make along the way may bring opposition, resistance and even danger. I remember a man I knew in Rochester, New York who upon hearing the reports about the horrific way in which workers were treated in some of the diamond mining industry in South Africa, made the decision to pull out his company’s investments in the industry. In the months that followed, he was fired over the profit loss made from such a decision. He lost his job and his family’s livelihood all for the sake of the gospel. It would five years before he was able to secure another corporate position of similar status and income.

We may fear the consequences of those choices and decisions to rise up and follow Jesus. But in the midst of it all, Jesus’ promises that those who lose their life for my sake will indeed find it. As Barbara Brown Taylor has said,
“That’s the promise buried in the demand of discipleship, that what we lose for his sake, we shall find again, returned to us more alive than ever before.”

Let us close with a prayer, a prayer written by St. Ignatius of Loyala, let us pray:

Lord Jesus, teach me to be generous, teach me to serve you as you deserve, to give and not count the cost, to fight and not heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor and not to seek reward, except that of knowing that I do your will. Amen.

Sermon preached by Reverend Jane B. Anderson at First Congregational United Church of Christ, Appleton, Wisconsin on June 22, 2008.