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

Exodus 19:2-8

They journeyed from Rephidim, entered the wilderness of Sinai, and camped in the wilderness; Israel camped there in front of the mountain. Then Moses went up to God; the Lord called to him from the mountain, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the Israelites: ‘You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites.”

So Moses went, summoned the elders of the people, and set before them all these words that the Lord had commanded him. The people all answered as one, “Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do.” Moses reported the words of the people to the Lord.

Sermon Text

Family is complicated. Have you noticed that? I do not think anything in life is as messy, as wonderful, as multifaceted as families and what they get up to. Take a moment for yourself, think of some of the mess – good, bad, or otherwise – that defines your family, and it should not take long for you to get exactly what I mean. That mess though, is not unique to any family related by blood, marriage, or circumstance. Any gathering of people will start looking like a family if they spend enough time around each other. There is a reason the Church so often talks about itself as a family. God our Father, Christ our Brother, and all people called by the Spirit, siblings in the same household.

Our scripture today captures one of God’s initial meetings with the people of Israel after they were around Sinai. It had been a long road from Egypt to the Sea of Reeds, and from the Red Sea to Sinai. Though many more years were ahead of them on this road, the people had already established they were not going to make this trip easy. They were skeptical about God’s intent with bringing them into the wilderness. Already, God was accused of planning to kill them with hunger and thirst, and now at the foot of Mount Sinai God was finally in a place to explain things fully to them. Still, the fire and smoke of the mountain was enough to scare the people.

This fear passed through time and shifted into a bit of a bizarre legend. The Babylonian Talmud, a collection of commentary on scripture and exposition on its narratives, describes God getting fed up with the people of God refusing to listen. This legend says that the people met, “Under Sinai,” in a literal sense. God, tired of no one wanting to enjoy what God had for them, picked up the mountain and held it above God’s people – “If you accept the Torah, well and good; and id not, there will be your burial.”[1]

That legend, of course, has never been seen as anything other than an interesting interpretive tradition. It should not, nor has it really ever been, be seen as the story behind this passage of scripture. The fact that we fill in the gaps of this story with this kind of thing, that God would threaten God’s people to make sure they listen, says an awful lot about how we choose to interact with God and with one another. There are always gaps between what scripture says and what we interpret from it, the white fire that burns between the words on the page, and how we fill them says as much about us as it does about God.

Scripture, in both the Hebrew and Greek testaments, contains formulas for blessings and curses. “If you do X, you will receive Y. But if you do A, you will instead suffer B.” You reap what you sow is a basic principle of ethics, Biblical or otherwise. Sometimes scripture teaches that God acts to bring about one thing or another. Other times, it is just a statement of fact. Proverbs tells you, many times, that if you are good with money you will have more money. That is not an act of God, that’s just common sense. In contrast, Christ tells us that if we do not care for the least of these, God will not acknowledge us as part of God’s family. God acts in one, simple causality and chance in the other.

Here, in God’s promise to the people at Sinai, God says that the people of the Covenant will be God’s “treasured possession,” if they keep the things commanded of them at Sinai. This is a conditional statement. “Keep the Torah, and you will be blessed.” That sounds like a quid pro quo – scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. That should tell us that we’re reading it wrong. We know how God works, we know that God is abundantly good and caring. God does not treat us well because we do what we should, we do what we should because God treats us well! Even at Sinai, at the very start, God calls Israel his treasure after they have done nothing but doubt and oppose him since they left Egypt!

The fact is that God has always been a God of mercy and grace. God has always loved with a love that cannot be quenched by anything. The people of God under that mountain and the people in this room today are loved with an unending and incredible love. That kind of love is not conditional, it holds onto people and does not let go. God lifts up the people of Israel here as a Holy Nation, a people of priests to proclaim God’s goodness to all the world. We, as people adopted into that relationship, continue that legacy. We are God’s treasured possession, and that status as God’s treasure is what inspires us to be good, to continue on, to grow.

Returning to our families, the place we began, I think we can all see in God’s love for us something we share with our families. We love our family, even though they drive us insane, even though they do not always treat us like they should. We love them with a love that cannot be quenched, and we love them that way because we follow God’s example. I firmly believe that people can only grow as much as we believe in their ability to do so. God’s overwhelming love for us, the high standard set by Sinai and by Christ, are all present to show us who we can be if we aspire to our highest heights. For our children, our siblings, our family, we have to believe in them as much as Christ believes in us – capable of infinite growth through the love that enables it to begin at all.

However, as God lays out in our passage today, an unwillingness of people to be a part of a loving relationship does break down that relationship. A child who does refuses to treat a parent well or a parent who refuses to treat a child well sometimes has to be cut off from regular relationship, for the good of all people involved. The love we feel cannot be quenched, but you cannot play a game for two with only one person willing to follow the rules.

Our divine relationship, our divine parent and siblings, God the Father and Christ our Brother, they are a different level of relationship. Perfect as they are, we cannot be wronged by them like we can be by human beings. We, though we may fail in a million ways, are always welcomed home – because we are God’s treasure. We throw ourselves onto God’s mercy, and we always find ourselves cared for.

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[1] Babylon Talmud. Shabbat 88a. A good explanation of this text can be found in Tzvi Novick, “Standing Under Sinai,” in The Torah.com available at: https://www.thetorah.com/article/standing-under-sinai-on-the-origins-of-a-coerced-covenant

1 Philippians 1: 1-11

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus,

To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the bishops and deacons:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I thank my God for every remembrance of you, always in every one of my prayers for all of you, praying with joy for your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because I hold you in my heart, for all of you are my partners in God’s grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the tender affection of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what really matters, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.

Sermon Text

Memory is a blessed thing. When we remember what has happened to bring us where we are today, it is often the sweetest parts of the past that linger with us. The light breaks through the dark just as cream floats to the top of a vat of milk. Remembrance, different than simple recollection, brings us into a state of bliss, of joy at what has been and an understanding that that same goodness is possible, maybe even more likely still, to happen once again. It is this reason that Christ tells us to, “Do this in remembrance of me,” in every table set for the Lord’s supper, there is always a reexperiencing of God’s goodness, of God’s love, of God’s salvation.

Today we have a homecoming service, a day where we gather as much as we are able from every corner of our Church’s diaspora. Kids and grandkids, cousins and beyond, this is the scope we dream of with such a day. The fact is that this Church has touched just about every corner of the world.

That may seem like an exaggeration, but think of where our family lives. Many are still local, but we have some people as far as Alaska. Some have gone international, if they don’t live outside the continental US then they have done work there. From a little church on the corner of a little neighborhood in the littlest state of the Union that could, the world is forever changed by the work of the children of this Church.

We celebrate today, not just the past, but the future. We have celebrated four graduates today – one from high school and three from Masters programs. Each is going forward to serve the world in new ways. Whether in healthcare or teaching, with solid plans or far flung hopes, the future is defined by the people who, having been raised up in love, are now willing to go forward and spread that love further still. Like the small seed, falling into the Earth and suddenly producing an abundant crop, a young person raised with love, support, and affirmation, can go forward to cause more good than any generation before them had ever dreamed of.

Paul, looking at the world from behind prison walls, was not constrained in his imagination. Sitting in the midst of darkness, he found hope in God. However, that hope was not empty hope – it was hope in the people that God had placed in his life. As anyone here who has been through tough times, especially anyone behind actual prison walls, can attest, connection is everything. We do not think of any aspect of life or faith except through how other people show it to us. Paul, constrained in that moment, was free to have hope because he knew that good people were doing the work he could not – and that he had his own work to do in the meantime.

For those of us gathered today, those who hold the past as something we were a part of, and those who have a entire future still to write, we find ourselves in a similar place. The young people we celebrate today may go any number of places in the future. They may remain local in their work, or go far away. They may stay in their current careers, or use their learning for something completely different.

Whatever they do, the duty of those of us who send them off into that adventure is to support them fully, to never cease to be their advocates. As Paul, we must constantly think of them as Christ does, as beloved children, siblings, and friends. We pray that their life is full of joy, free of trial, and that they constantly grow in knowledge and goodness.

For those who we celebrate, the message is very much the same. To remember those who have supported you, and wish them all love and support going forward. I do think a larger burden is placed on young people, though, and that is to make sure those that raised them do not forget that the future lies with them, and not with us. We who press on in our work locally, sometimes get locked into ways of thinking, ways of being that crush us. This year, one of our goals as leadership in this church is to put as many young people – 20 somethings and 30 somethings, onto committees, to constantly push our vision forward rather than back,

At moments like the one we find ourselves in now, we celebrate the work of God in all ages. This building, older than all of us here, has seen a great deal of change over the years. From physical changes like the addition and subtraction of parts of its makeup, to more abstract ones – the changing of denominations, ministers, and mindsets. It is my prayer that this church continues to be a testimony of all those things – the past in all its glories and trials. There is a light that shines out, not just from our large illuminated cross and flame on the side of the building, but from the people of this congregation. Long may it burn and light up the darkness of a world often lacking in hope.

Beyond what was, though, there is always the transformation of the world into newness. If we listen to young people, if we trust that our raising up of them was really into righteousness, then their work will outshine anything we ever did before. The prayer Paul had, that the Philippians would increase in knowledge and insight, is not a prayer for one people at one time, it is a prayer for all of us everywhere.

We must pray that God changes our minds, brings us into new places, for only through such transformation will we understand what God is doing in the here and now. “A small child will lead them,” said the prophet long ago, and now I augment his words to say, “We will be raised up by the children we once raised ourselves.” If only we follow their example as they once followed ours.

A wise man, or rather a wise muppet, named Yoda put it this way. “[Teachers,] are what [their students] grow beyond.”[1] Lord may we believe that to be true. May each of the people we celebrated today, not only meet our dreams and expectations of their goodness, but far exceed it. May they be blessed to outshine us, in every conceivable way, for theirs is the future, and theirs is a legacy they shall carry forward into the world. From its root here in North View, from this state of West, by God, Virginia, and into all the world. – Amen.

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[1] The Last Jedi, directed by Rian Johnson (Lucasfilm Ltd., 2017).