Matthew 10:24-39

“A disciple is not above the teacher nor a 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 Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!

“So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

“Everyone, therefore, who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven, but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.

“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.

“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, and 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.

Sermon Text

 Two weeks ago, we had a fantastic Annual Conference. That may sound like the most boring start to a sermon you can imagine but trust me it really is not. People from all across West Virginia came together to pray, to sing, to worship God, and do the work of the Church. A big reunion of people who sometimes have not seen each other for decades. We celebrate those who have died, those who have just begun the work of ministry, and those who are changing lives across West Virginia. While there are a lot of business actions that take place – budgets and resolutions and the like – Conference is primarily a Gospel check-in. We check where we have been, we check where we are, and we check where we are going.

The message for this year’s annual conference, the uniting scripture and prayer was from Isaiah. “… beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”[1] The preaching, the teaching, every part of our gathering was meant to hammer that home. We are to be the people who bring God’s good news into the world, and in bringing that good news, we are transformed into the beautiful image of the thing we are bringing the world. If we go out and we preach the Good News, we will become the beautiful envoys of that peace. Not because of our appearance, but because of the amazing goodness we bring wherever we go.

The Gospel is a message rooted in unity and care. It is only love that will be held against us in the hereafter. Whenever Christ holds the threat of eternal death over us it comes from two places – an unwillingness to love God or to love one another. Denial of our neighbor and of our God are often put next to each other, because by doing one we inevitably do the other. There is always a weight to the actions we take part in – the things we say and do not say, the things we endorse and the things we reject.

Naturally, the weight of anything to do with faith means that there are divisions that come from it. Think of the unimportant things we disagree about every day. The movies we like, the shows we watch, the sport teams we love – these all cause us to fight viscously against one another. If we raise the stakes, then we are naturally going to get even more worked up. When we are doing the business of the Church, bringing Heaven to Earth and the Word of Life into the hearts of those around us – then the stakes are infinite. That is, at the root of all things, why Churches can be nasty when they have something to fight about. When we are doing such important business, we tend to see each little part of it as equally important to the whole thing. We fight so hard about whether to carpet a room, because that carpet is the difference between Salvation and Damnation! At least we can feel that way.

Conference is a time when we can feel a little overwhelmed by our differences. Look at every other Conference all around the country. Hundreds of churches leaving over differences in polity and belief. Agitators feeding that fire, fueling churches leaving and doing their best to describe the ones that remain as horribly as possible. For twenty years there have been those in the United Methodist Church actively planning to create a new denomination and to blow up the old one on the way out.[2] We in West Virginia are not immune to the work of such people – this year two resolutions were put forward to try and push the conference into chaos. Two resolutions that the conference ultimately rejected even talking about, because we know better than to yell at each other and call that “holiness.”

This year our annual conference was a bright light in the darkness of argumentative and schismatic movements in the Church. There were differences, I would go so far as to say divisions. I told you that the Conference rejected two resolutions meant to rabble rouse, but I should tell you that this rejection was only about 60:40. Usually, you would think a disagreement that splits the body by so close a margin would have poisoned our perspective of the rest of conference. A last-minute argument before you leave the family dinner that spoils the night. That wasn’t the case though.

After every break in Conference, we gathered by singing hymns. We prayed constantly for the mission of the Church to be fulfilled. We sat alongside, not only people we agreed with, but people we disagreed with. I had an entire corner of people I sat with, all of us knitting, crocheting, cross stitching, and generally being the craft corner. While many of us voted the same way throughout Conference on various resolutions and acts, there were moments where we did not, and sometimes this was in those moments that felt most intense and difficult. Yet, we were able to enjoy our time sitting with each other. Not because we did not feel strongly, not because we did not care about the things we voted about, but because there was something else bringing us together. We cared about the Gospel enough to acknowledge that difference does not have to be the end of our union as the body of Christ.

Look around this room, tell me that at least one or two people here aren’t the kind of person you just cannot see eye to eye with. If they aren’t here today, look where they usually sit, and we will call that good enough. Why do we come together and sing our hymns, do our ministries, and call ourselves North View United Methodist Church? Because we care about each other! We care about our ministry! And in the midst of differences – superficial and deeply important – we can still be the people of God working for the transformation of the world.

The reality of our life together is that we will have moments when we read the word of God and instantly feel closer together. Sometimes we will read it and have responses that threaten to divide us from one another. The difficult work of the Church is to value our togetherness over our differences, and we manage to do that not by ignoring trouble or disagreements, but by seeing one another as valuable in the eyes of God and one another. Remember what I said at our outset, we are judged by our ability to love and nothing else. If we want to live as the Church together, we have to look at one another as God looks out at the world. As people worth being in relationship with, as people worth fighting to stay beside, as siblings we need to keep in our lives.

That ain’t always easy, and sometimes it means we don’t get what we want. However, if we stay true to where the Spirit leads us as the diverse body which we call the Church, we will see fruits of our efforts all around us. The Spirit is bringing us out into the world, the Spirit has brought us together today, and the Spirit will make sure to equip us in every way that is necessary. Whether we do this through our work with VBS this week, or in the simple act of beginning as a Charge next week, or any other action that brings us into the world to do God’s word, we are a Spirit driven people. We can embody what our Conference has asked us to be, messengers bringing God’s good news to the entire world. That is hard, that takes a lot of work and a fair bit of fighting, but it is necessary. We are the people of God, called to bring life into the world, and we must do that together. Go forth, and bring life into this world, as one people, as one Church, as the body of Christ. – Amen.

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[1] Isaiah 52:7

[2] The plan to create a new denomination was put forward in 2004 by leaders of Good News a traditionalist Methodist Publication and predecessor to The Wesleyan Covenant Association. Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20050306020025/http://faithfulchristianlaity.org/options_for_the_future.htm