Montreat

Preached by John DeBevoise

on 06/20/99

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 him 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.

      Matthew 10:24-39

As I look out on the congregation, I am mindful of the different times in my own life when I’ve had the privilege of worshipping here. I’m surprised to see some dear friends here this morning. Not surprised to see them in church, but surprised to see them in this particular sanctuary where I’m preaching today.

As I stood here on the podium, Emil said to me that this was a great sanctuary. I remembered, in his book on the Presbyterian Tradition how John Machi, who was for many years the president of Princeton Theological Seminary, lists this particular auditorium as one of the great worship points in all of the Presbyterian tradition. Did you know that? He does. That’s a book written, I think, in about 1956. He calls it “that great preaching auditorium located in the mountains of North Carolina.â?? It’s one of about five great places for worship that me mentions.

I have the sense of that this morning. I’m afraid the sanctuary, in its awe, overwhelms the preacher. But not the spirit, I trust.

I’m thinking about my father today. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. I remember when my older brother and I were in college together (we roomed together his junior year and my freshman year), our dad had given us, as an encouragement to us and a support for us, an old yellow Ambassador to drive around. He was covering all the insurance on it, as well. It was a good thing to have that car, but it was an old car.  It was about fifteen years old when we got it. It was fairly worn. The seats were all torn and we had to cover them with blankets. The passenger side (it only had two doors) had to be tied shut. So you had to either enter on the driver’s side or climb in through the window on the passenger’s side. Some of you have driven cars like that before.

I remember one day in the middle of the school year, my dad stopped by the college to visit us, and he took my brother and me out to dinner. We worked up the decision to broach the subject of this car with him over dinner. We mentioned to him that the car was really not in very good shape, particularly in terms of its appearance, and we offered up to him the problem this created in our dating life. “You know, Dad," we said, “it’s hard to date when you have to ask a girl to climb in through the window on the passenger’s side, or to climb in on the driver’s side. Frankly, it’s sort of an embarrassment to us."

He looked at us for a minute and he said, “Well, I didn’t realize it was a problem for you, an embarrassment. Hmmm," he said. “Well, I think I could probably help you with that." He didn’t say anything else about it during the meal.

He dropped us back off at the college, and he went back home, we presumed. The next morning we got up and looked out in the parking lot to find that old yellow Ambassador, and it was gone! We looked around and determined that it was stolen, and eventually ran to the phone and called Dad back at home and said, “The car is gone!" He said, “I know. I took it."

That was the last we ever saw of that car. The next car my brother and I owned was a car that we bought together about two years later that we paid for ourselves. And we covered the insurance on it. I remember him chuckling on the phone. In our fears, we said “The car is gone!" I remember his chuckling and his saying to us, “Boys, sometimes you have to lose yourself to find yourself."

It comes back to me this morning.

Carl Barth says that this text from Matthew illustrates for us that sin has its origin in the fact that we want to be our own judge, in that we are unwilling to trust God to be God. Listen to some of the lines from this substantive text:

A disciple is not above the teacher.
Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear him 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, for you are of more value than many sparrows.
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.

Happy Father’s Day!  This is the word of the Lord. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. This text illustrates the danger of being a lectionary preacher, doesn’t it. If I don’t use the lectionary, then I can do a better job of keeping Jesus under control. But with the lectionary, Jesus is likely to show up saying something at an inappropriate moment, like this text on Father’s Day.  Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.

The scripture from the Gospel of Matthew for this morning is a very dense text. A very full text, bringing us both challenge and comfort; bringing us both a call to faithfulness and a call to change. A rather parental text; giving us both encouragement and at the same time, admonishment. It is an enormous reversal of the world’s values, isn’t it.

Again and again and again in this text, you must lose yourself to find yourself. You must love me more than mother or father. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.

I remember a time this year when I found myself doing something, some service. Maybe you’ve had this experience, too, taking on some service or some act rather reluctantly, out of duty, only to discover with time that it was a source of joy for you. A source of life.

My wife had been tutoring, beginning in September, a first grade boy. Tutoring him on how to read. His name was Reggie. Where most of the first grade children had gotten with the reading program, being helped already in kindergarten, Reggie just had not caught it yet. The train, the reading train, was sort of pulling out of the classroom, and he couldn’t quite get on board. Every day the train was pulling away a little further, and he was falling further and further behind. We know that that’s an enormously bad disadvantage for a child, because when that happens it becomes almost impossible for them to ever catch up to the train unless either the train stops or someone gives them a boost up.

So, because she is who she is, she was volunteering on Friday mornings to tutor him for an hour in reading, trying to help him catch up with the train. But then her work schedule changed, and she wasn’t available anymore on Fridays when he needed to be tutored. I remember her worrying about this, and we were talking about it over dinner one night and I said to her, “What are you going to do about that? Are you still worried about Reggie, since you’re not going to be able to be there?" She said, “No, I’m not worried about that any more. I signed up another volunteer in his place." I said, “Who’s that?" (Like a big tuna, I just bit on that hook!) She said, “I signed you up on Friday mornings."

I complained. Fridays were my day off. I said, “Emalee, I don’t want to get up and have to go someplace on Fridays. That’s the only day of the week I don’t have to go someplace, and now you want me to get up and go down there and help somebody one more day during the week." She said, “John, this boy’s got to be tutored. Somebody’s got to get down there and teach him to read."

So when the next Friday came, I got up and grumbled down to the school, kind of complaining and resenting it and wondering why I said ‘yes’ to her signing me up. I went in the door, and out came this little boy. He wasn’t very big at all. He was a small boy, except for this enormous pair of tennis shoes that he had on. We would leave the classroom and walk down the hallway to the library, where we would work for an hour. He had very little to say, except in response to the questions I was asking him. He seemed to have a difficulty remembering words. I would teach him a word, even a very simple word like ‘go,’ and then it would be very difficult for him to remember that word even when we turned to the next page.

The work was helping him to remember the words he had just learned moments earlier. It was slow going. We developed something of a relationship—not really a conversational relationship, but a relationship nonetheless. I started, when I picked him up on Fridays, holding up my hand like this, and instead of saying “hi," he would, in silence, reach up and slap my hand that way. And off to the library we’d walk.

I would start to work with the book.  “Go," I’d say. “Go, Dog.  Go, Dog, go." (Some of you know this book.) We worked hard. We worked week in and week out. “Men at work." (Some of you know this story, don’t you?)

It begins to mean a great deal to me, this tutoring. There’s something about journeying with him and pulling for him and working with him that begins to build me up and to nurture me, and to renew me. I’m believing that this is the experience of every teacher. And that hour on Fridays, rather than being a burden on my day off began to be one of the most rewarding and satisfying things that I did all week long. The last week of school, we’re working at it, and then all of a sudden, just an act of God’s grace, I think, it happens! Whether the scales fell from his mind or whether the dam broke or whether the door opened, all of a sudden something in his brain turned, and it started to happen. The words started coming out. “Dog," he said. And then the next page, “Dog," on his own, without me prompting him. “Red dog," he said. “Blue dog. Do you like my hat? No, I do not like your hat." And he turned and he looked up to me and he said, “I am reading!"  “Yes," I said, “you are! You’re reading!"

Nothing this year has been as rewarding for me.

It’s a spiritual truth, isn’t it. Keepers. Losers. Losers. Giving it away. Finders.

I want to go back to these challenging, disturbing words from Jesus. 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. 

I am helped by the commentators here who remind us that there are other gospel passages which help us remember that Jesus loved his mother, and that Jesus was nourished by his family, and Jesus supported the family. I think the Bible teaches us that Jesus was a person of family values. Indeed, most of the commentators point out that in this passage Jesus is contrasting not following him with something that was of the highest value in the Jewish or Aramaic society, and that was belonging to and loyalty to one’s family. He’s contrasting not following Jesus with the highest value he can find to bear for those people, as if to say, “That’s good!  But this, this is unequivocally better."

We also know that Matthew writes to a persecuted church, and there is still a persecuted church in the world today, some of whom may have had to choose between following Jesus and being in the family. This text is a text to comfort them. This is a text to remind them of how Jesus sought to comfort them here. There are Christians in the world today who in embracing the faith may mean alienation from their mother or from their father or from their family. May we pray for the burden that they carry in this.

This text is meant to help them.

But I hear, this morning for the people gathered here, I hear this text mostly as a challenge to us. Because at times in American society it looks to me like we could become a little, well, idolatrous about family. Do you know what I mean? It’s as if we get our own particular brand of American shintoism going with respect to family. This text serves to reorient us. Amongst all of the millions of dollars being spent on advertising today to convince us that if we are really good children, Dad will get a crescent wrench, this text reorients us to the gospel truth that nothing can be more central than following Jesus. Not even family. And those who confess Jesus, everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, Jesus says in Matthew, not just whispering it in secret, but even proclaiming it from the housetops, those who confess Jesus may find that it shakes up their family life.

After all, in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus keeps reaching out and bringing people into the family. He calls God “Father." And he calls Daughter the poorest, most vulnerable, sickest woman he encounters in the Gospels.

This text makes me think of the two hundred and fifty million children I heard about this week. You know the ones I’m talking about? Did you hear parts of the president’s address about the United Nations International Labor Congress in Switzerland? He was talking about the two hundred and fifty million children who are bound to hard work in this world. Two hundred and fifty million, many of whom are bound to prostitution. Two hundred and fifty million, many of whom are actually bound to slavery. Two hundred and fifty million, many of whom are actually chained to machines in order to keep them working. This is not hyperbole. Two hundred and fifty million, many of whom risk their bodies and injure their bodies because they have to work in tasks that even adults should not have to work at.

This text makes me think of the three children in my county this year, who were beaten to death by their fathers. We ought not to be at perfect peace in our family circles and celebrations unless there is unrest for us about the pain and suffering of these people. We ought not to trade on the goods made by these children. We ought not to find joy in them when they come at the expense of these little ones that Jesus loves. We will not be able to follow Jesus and be at peace with the status quo.

It’s confusing to me how many Christians have committed to memory the text from Proverbs (spare the rod and spoil the child), but are not able to recite the text that says, “Woe to you if you harm one hair on the head of these little ones."

So we now are passing laws requiring children to treat adults with respect. What laws will be passed to protect the two hundred and fifty million who are being worked to death?

Unless we are willing to risk our contentment, our resources, our energy, bringing help to this part of the family of God, this text teaches us that family values begins with following Jesus. And whatever else it may mean to be in the family, confessing Jesus Christ, it means that those whom Jesus loves are going to have to be counted as a part of the family, too, and treated like they are family members. Confessing it with our lives as well as our words. Those who give the highest priority to the task of protecting themselves or their family may find, says Matthew, that there is nothing left to protect if that is your highest priority. The person who spends their life trying to find themselves, whether it be by indulging their appetites or establishing their dynasty, that person may soon discover what has been lost.

Conversely, the person who surrenders freedom by acknowledging Jesus as Lord, will find himself indeed. It’s an enormous reversal of the world’s values, isn’t it. Matthew reminds us that Jesus offers us the possibility of real joy and happiness, which comes from taking his promises seriously. Which comes ordering our whole world, including our families, and what it means to be family, around Jesus Christ. Those who find their life will lose it and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

Lord, give us the creativity. Give us the courage, to spend our lives serving you. O Lord, give us the energy, give us the discernment, to be able to give our lives away that we might find the life that you are calling us to. That we might give up being the people we think we need to be in order that we might become the people that you are calling us to be.

I have a number of friends from the First Presbyterian Church in Gastonia here today. I see them out in the congregation, and it’s a help to me that they are here. I am remembering a teacher that my family had when we were in Gastonia. Her name was Mrs. Shellman. I don’t remember her first name, because she taught my daughter in the first grade. Those of you who have had a first grader know that all first grade teachers are simply “Miss" or “Mrs."  or “Ms" So-and-so, or “Mr." So-and-so. They don’t have first names—just last names. This was Mrs. Shellman.

One of the things about this first grade class was that in addition to the other students in it, there was a little girl who also was very small. Very, very small. I mean, like Thumbelina. She had some sort of a disorder which kept her bones from growing like the other children’s. So they had to make special provisions in the class, a special step up to the water fountain. And everywhere they went, she traveled in a wheelchair because her stride was so small she couldn’t keep up with the rest of the class. Of course, everywhere you go in the first grade, you march in a line. So she had to be in line also.

I was really impressed with the way this class accepted this little girl, and treated her just like she was a member. I knew it came from the good leadership of that teacher and the way she insisted that that little girl be treated, fully like a member of the rest of the class. One of the things we looked forward to in our family, with our new first-grader, was the day on which she was going to be the “leader" in class. To be the “leader" to the first grade is just the pinnacle of human experience. Do you remember what it felt like to be chosen to be the “leader" in the first grade? The one who was cleaning the erasers and the one who was putting the weather stickers up on the map? And the one who was going to get to lead the line from the class to the lunchroom, and we awaited the day when Beth was going to be the leader with great anticipation.

I’ll never forget, being the kind of obnoxious father I am, that the day she was the leader, I went down to the school and stood out in the parking lot, because I knew that when lunchtime came they would leave the classroom and walk down the long breezeway headed towards the lunchroom. If I was there with the video camera in the parking lot when she came by, I would be able to get a picture of her at the head of the line, going on her way from the classroom. The appointed moment came, and out came the line, around the corner… and Beth wasn’t at the head of it. She wasn’t there. I thought, What does this mean? Where is she? She is the leader today? She wasn’t there. I looked down the line and instead, there she was about in the middle of the line. And she is pushing this other little girl’s wheelchair.

Then it dawned on me that she had never said that being the leader meant that she was going to be the first one in the line. That was my stuff! I had done that to her! She had just said she going to be the leader. This teacher had the creativity and the imagination to lead those children in such a way in defining “leader" to mean “Leader" was going to be the one who was serving others. So if you were the leader that day, you had the privilege of pushing your neighbor. I am sure a creative teacher like that found a way when that other girl was the leader to honor her also.

It made such a deep impression on me, I went home saying to myself, “O Lord, teach me to be a leader like that. The kind of leader who knows how to give oneself away in order that we all might find our self." It’s just an enormous reversal of the world’s values, isn’t it.

Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. And it’s hard. Jesus says, “Take up your cross and follow me." It’s very, very hard. And remember, Barth says it’s hard because we are afraid. We are afraid to deny ourselves. We are afraid to trust God to be God. Afraid that if we aren’t first, then there won’t be enough. Afraid that if we don’t possess enough of it then we will miss life’s satisfactions. Afraid that without the glimmering idol that we won’t be full or safe or secure or happy. Afraid that God won’t be there for us. Afraid that God is not trustworthy. Afraid that God will not be able. Afraid that we won’t be able to follow Jesus.

All sin has its origin in being, says Barth, and the fact that we want to be our own judge and that we are afraid to trust God to be God. Knowing our fear and knowing how frightened we are, Jesus turned to his disciples and said to them, Do not fear. A disciple is not above the teacher. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul, but rather fear the one, as Peterson says, who has control of your body and soul altogether. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from their Father. And even the hairs on your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are certainly of more value to God than the sparrows.

God is trustworthy. And Matthew’s text is teaching us a theme we have often heard in the scriptures. There is no reason to be afraid. God loves us and Jesus loves us. We are of infinite worth because of that love. Nothing, no threats, no evil tongues, no sickness, no failures, no disasters, can separate us from that love. Even though the world may hurt our body, nothing can separate us from that love.

I am remembering my grandfather this morning. My grandfather, who taught the men’s Sunday School class at the First Presbyterian Church in Sebring, Florida, in 1933. I am remembering him sing a song, which he said they ended every class with. I don’t know (I wasn’t there), but he said they ended every class with this song. You know it, don’t you? You know this song.

 Why do I feel discouraged? Why do the shadows come?
 Why should my heart be lonely And long for heaven and home?

 When Jesus is my Portion, My constant friend is He.
 For His eye is on the sparrow,  and I know He watches me.

 His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.