Sermon: "Growing Up"

Thank you, Katie, for that reading, and for your sermon title, “Growing Up.”   Aren’t you glad this text from Matthew didn’t fall on Father’s Day, or Mother’s Day?  Can you imagine?  It’s hard to believe the Jesus we know and love would say, “for I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother”!  How can the “Prince of Peace” say, “I have not come to bring peace but a sword”?   In Luke’s version (in chapter 12), Jesus says he’s come to bring “division,” but in Mark, the images are even more violent.  Mark’s chapter 13 is what scholars like to call the “little apocalypse,” because Jesus quotes the prophets Zephaniah and Daniel on coming end of the world, or “The Day of the Lord.”  In verses 12 and 13, Jesus warns his disciples about terrible persecutions to come.  He says, “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father against his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name.”  And this is called the “Good News” because….?  I suppose it’s good news if “misery loves company,” since every family has arguments – from minor spats to 50-year-grudges.  Family conflict is a just part of growing up.

In the church where I grew up and was confirmed, back in North Carolina, I was visiting one time when the father of one of my Sunday School and Youth Group friends there started complaining about his daughter.  She had moved to London’s East End to work as a missionary with her husband and family, but her dad thought it was wrong for her to take away “his” grandchildren.  I so admired their work, and their courage, I was astonished he, as a Christian, would condemn them.  Plus it made me feel horrible, since for nearly half my life, I’ve been doing my work with a whole continent separating me from my parents.  I know we’re called to minister and proclaim the Gospel everywhere; in other words, our “mission fields” are not just far away overseas, but also right here at home. So I could understand how a Christian could honestly JUSTIFY living a quiet suburban life – because that’s the life we’re living now here in Brookfield – but I couldn’t understand how they could read the Bible and believe that’s the life Jesus DEMANDED!  Jesus was all about taking the Good News of God’s love on the road.  Discipleship has never been about winning your family’s approval.

Jesus knew that more than anyone, and that’s what today’s text is about – the trouble we may make for ourselves if we grow up into the “fullness of life” Christ offers and truly do what we are called to do to bring about God’s Reign here on earth.  You might be surprised at the way Jesus treated his own family – because he is pretty disrespectful, even rude. Later in the book of Matthew we can read (in chapter 12), “While he was still speaking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers were standing outside, wanting to speak to him.  Someone told him, ‘Look your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.’  But to the one who had told him this, Jesus replied, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ and pointing to his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers!  For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.’”

Wow!  Jesus did not promote traditional “family values” the way you might think! Since Joseph disappears from the story of Jesus early in his life, it couldn’t have been easy for Mary to raise her family alone.  Jesus knew how hard things could be in his culture for those the prophets traditionally called on the people to support – the “widows and orphans.”  So Jesus set out to break apart the patriarchal system of the ancient world – where obedience to the father was everything, the whole foundation of society.  In ancient law, a man could divorce his wife and set her aside for no reason – leaving her to either remarry or go back to her father, if she were very very lucky, or to starve or beg or become a prostitute. That’s why, when Jesus spoke out against divorce, he was acting like a feminist and defending women’s rights to be secure and protected.  In many places, a father could even have members of his family put to death without the benefit of trial.  In this context, for Jesus to name God as “Father” had much less to do with giving GENDER to the Lord Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, than it had to do with undermining the power of earthly fathers and UNITING all people into one human family “under God.” You may remember what Jesus said about fathers in Matthew 23, verse 9: “Call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven.”

In many ways, this is what growing up is all about – leaving your father and mother and relying on God for wisdom and guidance instead.  To pray “Our Father” is to submit ourselves to new rules for living, under the “new covenant” of Jesus – not necessarily to obey local laws or conventional social expectations. “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” is both a prayer to God and a courageous response to the “Great Commission” from Jesus.  Christians are called do be prophetic, and for Jesus, “righteousness” meant taking that prophetic and perhaps unpopular path.  So if Christians choose to “take up the cross and follow” Jesus, we shouldn’t expect life will be easy.  Remember at the end of today’s reading, when Jesus talks receiving either a “prophet’s reward” or “reward of the righteous” for welcoming disciples? That “reward” may not necessarily be a good thing.  Remember the “reward” given to the prophet who proclaimed Jesus as the Messiah – our dear friend John the Baptist?  His reward (in Matthew Chapter 14) was to have his head served up to King Herod’s wife on a platter!

But when Jesus says we’re all supposed to “lose” our lives for his sake, he isn’t suggesting we take up skydiving without a parachute just to prove our love for him.  And he doesn’t mean we are to choose a life that’s nothing but suffering and misery, just because pain is good for us.  I believe Jesus just meant that we are given one life to spend and use as we choose – and receiving what Jesus calls “life” comes from spending it wisely, doing our part to further God’s Reign of love here on earth.  Following Jesus may not necessarily please your family, but it will put you in a place to do what you were uniquely created to come into this world to do.

We all know people, don’t we, who took a different path than the one their parents set out for them?  The son of a prominent historian quits college to become a carpenter.  The daughter of a construction executive becomes a forest ranger and conservation activist.  A housewife’s daughter becomes a top government official in the “war on terror.”  A woman who’s a top college administrator has a daughter who becomes a housewife.  A fundamentalist preacher disowns his gay son, who finds an open and affirming UCC church where he can still worship as he pursues his dream of being an actor. A pacifist Quaker pastor’s son leaves Midwestern farm life to become a war hero.  I’ve known all of these people and heard their stories.  And still, we’re surprised when it happens.  I was surprised when it happened to me.

When I was growing up, my home church, Congregational United Church of Christ, was very much like this one.  We were a mainline church with great Sunday School and music programs for kids.  I often played the piano in worship, and everybody thought I should be a church organist one day.  But I had felt the call to be a church pastor since I was in 6^th grade, even though most people back then thought the idea of a “lady preacher” was pretty funny.  So it became my own way of getting back at them that when anybody in that church asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up, I’d look them in the eye, and with a straight face and my very best Tammy Faye Baker Southern accent, I’d say, “I want to be a TV faith healer.”  I loved watching them squirm.

At the time, I figured ordained ministry wasn’t possible for me, so I followed my dad into journalism.  But it really wasn’t a good match for my particular spiritual gifts.  When I covered my first plane crash, I nearly missed my deadline because I was so busy counseling the firefighters and EMTs who were devastated by the loss of life – it was a small plane, but still not one of the dozen passengers had survived.  And when my first woman pastor even suggested that I get involved in church leadership, that’s when I caught the first available flight to California.  Like Jonah fleeing Ninevah, I was determined to avoid the public humiliation of speaking out as a prophet on behalf of God.  And since I had an excellent job on a newspaper in a city close to my hometown, you can imagine my running off to study acting did not delight my parents.  But I thank God that they trusted me, and in God’s care for me, that I would be led on the right path. 

I count myself very blessed that my parents had read this passage from Jesus, and they had said to me often that they knew when they had me that I was only “on loan” to them during my growing up years.  At my baptism, they had promised me to Christ, to bring me up to be His disciple in the service of others.  They knew my life was to do what God intended, and not what I or they intended.  And now, look – here I am.  I’m guess I’m a TV faith healer after all – since I’m a preacher, and we’re broadcast on local cable!

My prayer for you – whether you’re young enough to be just now discerning your life’s vocation or whether you’re in the middle of your career path or whether you’re discovering a new area of Christian service in retirement – is that you will find true joy in losing yourself in discipleship and growing up into the full stature of Christ.  For, as theologian Frederick Buechner once said, God calls each of us to give our lives to Christ at “the point at which our deepest gladness meets the world’s deepest need.”

Thanks be to God for this Good News.  Amen.