Jesus first.. Matthew 10:24-39

What does Jesus ask of us? To be first in our lives. Reading Jesus words in Matthew this week makes it clear that Jesus asks to be first in every part of our lives.^

“Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; ^38 and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. ^39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. The Holy Bible : New International Version. , Mattt 10:37-39. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996, c1984

God calls us to love himself first. The first commandment is clear; God is to be first. But as we look around its very hard not to see all that God has offered us: family, friends, identity, purpose, have all been offered for us on this earth. And Jesus says that we will only enter the kingdom of God after we've let go of all that we are and have on this earth.

Jesus leaves us no way around the challenge of letting go. When we let go of everything and everyone else we are ready to meet God. I've seen people do it in nursing homes and hospice bed. It's beautiful and sad to watch all at once as they say farewell to those they love and turn their face towards heaven.

Jesus challenges all our allegiances to spouse, parent, child, neighbor, friend, nation and all others we care about. The kingdom of God is waiting for us. Let go of everything and you're there. Don't worry about when the time will come, just know that there will be such a day.

Go to the lost ... Mathew 9:35-10:23

You have been sent.

In our Gospel Jesus sent his friends out to preach, heal the sick, and cast out demons. He sent them to the lost of Israel. Today he sends us out to into the world. He sends us first to our own before we go into the world. In the Gospel he told his friends to travel light, “You received without payment; give without payment. ^9 Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, ^10 no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff; for laborers deserve their food.” The Holy Bible NRSV, Matthew 10:8-10. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989.

Jesus sends us out much the same. We have doubts and fears. We have limitations and struggles and he tells us to travel light. We might not believe we're ready; but the hurting of this world are ready to meet him. He sends us out to tell the world the Good News: the kingdom of God has come near.

Just as Jesus sent his friends out he welcomed new friends to his company. His circle included sinners who just wanted to be near him (see Matthew 9 and Mark 2). There were many hurting souls who sought out Jesus; and Jesus responded by sending his closest 12 followers out into the nation of Israel to find others who were lost and who he could still reach.

Jesus is with us today when we venture out in his name. This is our time, live in his boundless love not only in the safe places; but in the uncertain places. I take note that Jesus sent his friends first to their own nation before sending them to all nations. Our first calling is to minister in our own homes and families. Our ministry doesn't stop there; but it starts among our own and then we are to go to the hurting at the ends of the earth.

Who needs healing? Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Jesus had a mission. Matthew makes that abundantly clear; Jesus taught, healed, died, and rose because he was on a mission. Matthew's Gospel concludes as Jesus sent his followers out to all nations with a mission based in his own.

Jesus mission of healing meant calling all people back to God including "those people" who the religious would call "sinners." Jesus' mission lead him beyond preaching to the spiritually healthy. He came to heal broken spirits and broken bodies. Jesus ate with the tax collectors, traitors who would shake down their own people to help out the Romans. Jesus ate with publicly known sinners who couldn't hide their shameful actions any longer. When they asked why he replied,

“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. ¹³Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” Matthew 9:12-13.

Jesus mission was to heal. He healed a broken girls body and he healed sick mens' souls. He healed in unexpected places focusing on the health of each person as a whole being. He even healed when a woman suffering from a hemorrhage reached out to touch him. Jesus mission led him to meet the contagious, the long suffering, and outraged those who believed they we healthy enough to judge others.

Mission is a commonly used phrase in churches today. We have missionaries, we are called to mission work, we have home missions and international missions. A friend said that, "Everything is about mission in the church these days." The challenge is to keep our mission, our work, in line with Christ's mission. We cannot force Christ to do what we would like rather we must shape our lives around his ministry and mission.

The Pharisees didn't like Jesus expanding fellowship. But he had a mission independent of their opinions and authorization. We can't stop Jesus mission; but if we jump on board with him we can and will see healing happen.

Matthew 7:21-29 words of authority

Jesus preached a sermon on a mountain that, according to Matthew, left the crowds "...amazed/ astounded/ frightened ἐξεπλήσσοντο at his teaching,^ for he taught them as one having authority/ power/ jurisdiction ἐξουσίαν, and not as the scribes." Matthew 7:28-29

Jesus words opened up the kingdom of God for everyone to hear and experience. Even at the very tail end of this earth re-visioning sermon we hear him speak both law and promise. The crowd who gathered wanted to hear Jesus teach and they heard him declare a vision of God at work in the world like no one else could. He spoke provocatively inviting hearers to imagine the kingdom that was coming into being.

Some of Jesus' words leave me (and I suspect others) unsettled. Jesus named differences between a life built on sand and a life built on rock. The crowd knew what he meant; we know too whether we like it or not. He named the reality that we are free to choose our own destruction and often do. He spoke a word that makes me even more uncomfortable:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. ^22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ ^23 Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.’ Matthew 7:21-23 NRSV

Jesus spoke the whole Word of God. He spoke the promise of eternal life and still named the reality that we can choose to walk away from God in the same sermon. He wasn't running for election or earthly approval. He didn't need our endorsement to be Son of God and son of man. He spoke directing, challenging, even needling his hearers to examine their lives and their relationship to God and their neighbors.

Live in worry live in trust: Matthew 6:24-34

Its funny to hear people talk about what makes a good sermon and then to read one of Jesus sermons. People talk about how important it is to hear the word of God and to hear about real life. Imagine Jesus' sermons as models for preaching.

Jesus' preaching was never one dimensional: He talked about everyday life, scripture, prayer, theology, heaven, hell, and God's mercy often in just one sermon. The snippet of a sermon we read from this week was given on a Mountain to a crowd who gathered to listen to Jesus teach and who heard him declare a vision of God at work in the world..

Jesus' words challenged his hearers not to worry; but to be open to God's work in the world. He reminded them about God's care for his creatures, especially for us humans who were created in the Father's image. He offered a challenge: not to worry about the things we need in this world . He made a promise that God who cares for the birds of the air and the flowers of the field would care for us too.

The people who came to listen to Jesus were searching for a leader, a hero, who would set them free. They'd heard about healing, miracles, and daemons who'd been caste out. They didn't want to intellectually understand God's will. They wanted to know their place in the world what God wanted them to know and to experience. They wanted to experience it; and from what they'd heard and some had seen Jesus was the one. They were looking for a deliverer who would set them free from Roman Imperial power to be God's chosen nation. Jesus came to set the world free from sin and death.

Jesus offered his hearers then and today a freedom that this world can't give; a freedom from striving for things and an opportunity to live in the Kingdom of God right now instead.

what lasts is God Matthew 28:16-20

Jesus sends us out to make disciples in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When we do we connect new believers to the one who will remain after every thing else has slipped away.

Everything in this world can turn to dust. Psalm 103 says that we humans are made from dust and like a flower in the field we will just drift away. Things that we count on as hard and permanent drift away, little by little. My 1987 Chrysler LeBaron was well on its way to rusting away when I sold it with 215,000 miles on it. Instead of solid fenders it had swiss cheese fenders, you might know the kind. We could see right through the holes. When I took the confirmation kids from my first church in Minnesota on a service afternoon two of the moms slipped cell phones in their kid’s backpacks just to be on the safe side. They thought the wheels might just fall off at any time. I saw that old Chrysler running every so often a few years after I traded it in, I wonder if the wheels have fallen off, yet.

Scripture teaches us that everything fades away. Instead of staying stable even that old car that never quit running is just drifting away little by little. A little bit more washes away with every sand and salt covered road.

People who live in big central cities and out in the country have experienced this same kind of thing first hand. Something that used to be permanent is now simply disappearing in the rain and the wind. Old houses in forgotten city neighborhoods and old farm places that are falling into the ground have a lot to teach us about our impermanence. Moss replaces shingles, rock solid wall plaster walls just give way over time, and dust remains behind. A few generations ago people came home to what's now pile of rotting wood; it was the safe haven from winter, snow, rain, and winds and now its turning back into the dust and the earth.

Things that we think are permanent aren’t. Things that we can see, things that we count on everyday, turn to dust. And into this world comes something that you can’t even see that will not turn to dust: the Spirit of the living God. Jesus gave the Spirit to all who follow him. It is the Spirit who will help you see God. But you can’t see the Spirit. Just like you can’t see the wind. Billy Graham used to say that you see the effect of the wind just like you can see the effect that God has in our world. He said it’s a mystery. Even worse is that we don’t always see God’s activity either in this world.

Jesus said go and make disciples in the name of the 3 in 1 God who will never fade away. Go and share a promise that in him we have life after everything else has turned to dust.

God gives away the Spirit Acts 2:1-21 John 20:19-23

Jesus is up to something big by passing the Holy Spirit on to us; but there's more to this gift than might be first expected. God's Spirit isn't given in a neatly wrapped package (with gift receipt) at one point or time in history.

Our readings this Sunday tell us two distinct occasions when the Spirit came into believers' lives.

• The risen Jesus breathed out and told his friends receive the Holy Spirit. They gathered in a locked room fearing the same people who had killed Jesus. They'd heard the first reports of the resurrection and still feared for their lives. Jesus came and stood among them breathing out and telling them "peace be with you" and "receive the holy spirit (John 20).
  
• The Spirit was seen as fire in tongues on the Apostles' heads in Jerusalem. The believers gathered together in Jerusalem praying and praising God together. Beyond human explanation they began to speak, each one in their own native tongue, and understand one another regardless of where they came from or what language they spoke (Acts 2).

God's on the loose. We can impose no limits on where the Spirit moves in flame, breath, wind, or whatever other form God might choose. In Religion After 2000 Andrew Greeley offers a helpful challenge to the church asking two questions that are great for Pentecost.

Why, I wonder, are we so afraid of mystery?

Or to put it another way why are so eager to budget the Holy Spirit's time for Her when on the record She is determined to blow whither she will?

The gift of the Spirit is a promise of future relationship with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God comes to this relationship freely and unfettered by our judgments and ideas about what God can or can't do. Jesus' gift of the Spirit is a mystery that we don't solve or resolve; instead the Spirit is the very real presence of God meeting us together with God's Word over and over. The Holy Spirit meets us not as we humans would choose; but as God would choose. The Spirit comes freely to comfort, chastise, enliven, and move us.

A comment from Nancy, in response to last week's post about Jesus' prayer in John 17, has really gotten me thinking about God's gift of the Spirit. What Nancy wrestled with so beautifully is the idea of Jesus giving away a part of the divine in Pentecost. What happens at Pentecost isn't the grand finale; God's promises to be with us from here on into the future; and as we go into whatever future might be in store we know that we don't go alone.