A music magazine I read has a column every month where it asks three musicians various questions, including what was the first record they ever bought, and where?
Well, how about you? For me, if you exclude the set of Freddie and the Dreamers singles my aunt and uncle gave me when I was about five, it would be that I spent a token I was given as a Sunday School prize. It was a compilation album by someone I would no longer wish to admit to having liked – Rolf Harris.
When I got to my early teens and began serious record collecting, one of my first purchases was also a compilation album: Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits.
The thing about compilations is that they pull material from various stages of a musician’s career, and the only thing that gives them continuity is the performer in question.
What we have in our passage today is like that. It seems to be a compilation of different parts of Jesus’ teaching; all put together in one place by Matthew. The nearest equivalent passages in other Gospels like Luke do not appear all together, as they do here.
What holds them together? Well, the ‘artist’ is Jesus – obviously! If there is anything more, it is about discipleship under pressure. Jesus knew his followers would be put under pressure for their loyalty to him. Even if the pressures we face on our faith aren’t quite the same, there is still a lot here to help us stay faithful when the difficulties come.
The first pressure is fear.
In verses 24 to 31, Jesus talks about those who are like Beelzebul, the devil, and who therefore implicitly make trouble for us. But he says, if you’re going to fear anyone, fear God – yet he cares for us more than the sparrows, and he numbers every hair on our heads.
If we trust in our heavenly Father, it puts our earthly fears in perspective. Whatever happens to us, we are safe in his hands. I know that’s easier said than done at times, but it is a truth and a hope to cling onto when times are dark.
Yesterday, we celebrated just one such person at Midhurst. Pauline had been the church treasurer until earlier this year, when she was given a terminal diagnosis with cancer. While she made what she could of time with her family in her final weeks and months, there was one thing she told me more than once. And I know she told others, too.
She said, I am not worried about where I am going. I trust in the Lord, and I am safe in his hands.
And as I listened to her saying that there was no anxiety in her voice. She truly believed that. Cancer could have imbued her with fear. But she knew Jesus. And that changed everything.
Now like I said, for some of us, this is still easier said than done. It may take us a while to work through the shock of bad news. Not all of us can flick a switch and have instant peace. Some of us will take a little journey before we get to that point of acceptance and peace. I think I am one such person. And so I am preaching as much to myself as to you on this. We may have things to grieve before we can feel the peace.
But that doesn’t change the fact that this is a destination Jesus offers to all his disciples. Whatever threatens to make us afraid, God is ready and willing to give us his gift of peace. For whatever happens to us, we belong to him. As the Apostle Paul told the Romans, nothing can separate us from the love of God that is ours in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We can also be afraid when something unjust is perpetrated against us. That is the sort of thing the children of Beelzebul can do. That is why Jesus reassured his disciples that ‘there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known’ (verse 27). In other words, God will expose these people.
I don’t know whether you’ve been on the end of unjust accusations, but I have. I can think of at least two occasions when church members who had taken a dislike to me then tried to make false Safeguarding allegations against me. It took me a while to realise that God was still with me, and that I had justice on my side. But it was true. God is bigger than our fears.
The second pressure is shame.
32 ‘Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. 33 But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.
In other words, don’t be ashamed of Jesus. There will be plenty of social pressure to disown him or play down our commitment to him and our love of him.
In our society, it’s often more about the risk of mockery. Like the time when I was on the bus going home from school with other friends, and one of them, Clifford, said sneeringly to me, ‘I hear you had a spiritual experience last weekend.’ (I had been away on a circuit youth weekend.) I played it down.
But in other societies today or in the time of those first Christian disciples, it was much more serious. I am currently reading the autobiography of John Lennox. If you haven’t heard of him, John Lennox is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University. He holds three doctorates and is also a committed Christian. He has become a doughty defender of the Christian faith in the public arena and is well-known for having debated leading atheists such as Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens.
However, what is much less known about him is the amount of his spare time in between teaching at both Cardiff and Oxford universities he gave to travelling to Eastern Europe before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He and others provided education in Maths, science, and Christianity to people there.
In one story of those trips that he tells in the book, he talks about a Christian family in the former East Germany that he met. The children of the family were thrown out of school at the age of fourteen for continuing to profess faith in Jesus. No more education for them, as a punishment for their faith. No access to anything other than the most menial of jobs. But they were not ashamed of Jesus.
We know how so many of those first disciples held to their faith in Jesus when confronted with the pressure to deny him and be ashamed of their faith. So, what kept them, and those young East German Christians, loyal when they could have had an easier life if they had denied Jesus?
Surely, it was knowing just how much Jesus had done for them, how much he loved them, and how much it had already cost him to do so. Do we always keep that at the forefront of our minds? If I had done that, maybe I wouldn’t have clammed up on that bus trip. Maybe some of you wouldn’t have given in to social pressures, either, if you regularly remembered that Jesus loved us to the point of death.
The third and final pressure is a bit of a shock: it’s family.
In verses 34 to 39 Jesus says that he will divide family members against each other, and you aren’t worthy to be his disciple if you don’t love him more than you love your family.
Well! Isn’t the church supposed to be pro-family? Aren’t we the ones who care about marriages not only surviving but thriving? Aren’t we the ones who preach faithfulness and a strict sexual ethic? Aren’t we the ones who put on parenting courses so that children will be raised well? We’re pretty invested in the institution of the family.
But Jesus here is not addressing people who undermine the family, who promote the easy break-up of relationships, and the idea that you put your own happiness ahead of that of your spouse. No: he is saying something different from what we typically campaign about. He is telling us that even our families can become idols. Family life can trump commitment to God.
And it’s true. How many times today do family events mean that we don’t come to worship? How about what happens when a young person from a non-Christian family shows an interest in faith? It’s not unusual for their family to put pressure on them not to get too committed. Out come all the stories about religious cults.
Jesus has an important point here. Yes, elsewhere he teaches about the sanctity of marriage and all those things. But here he warns us never to put anything above our commitment to him, not even our families. It doesn’t mean that we neglect those we love, but it does mean that our family relationships must never compromise our radical commitment to Jesus.
I understand the pull of this temptation. I waited longer than most for the right woman to marry, and then to become a father. I moved my day off to Saturday to make it easier to have family time. Hence, I still have to ask myself: is Jesus still the most important person in my life?
I know a married couple who became Christians in adult life, a few years into their marriage. One day, one of them said rather nervously to the other, ‘I’m sorry, but there is someone else I love more than you.’
I wonder whether the other spouse thought they were about to hear the confession of an affair.
But then the first spouse continued. ‘His name is Jesus.’
How do we show our loved ones that Jesus is number one in our lives? Or do we only express any dedication to Jesus within the space that our family members allow us?
We need to remember the old saying: Jesus is a capitalist. He only believes in takeover bids.
And that’s right. That’s why we call him ‘Lord.’ We cannot call him Lord and then put someone else or something else higher in our lives than him.
Maybe family is not where we feel that temptation. But for some of us, it is. And if it’s not family, who or what else is it that we are enticed to elevate to a greater priority than Jesus? Do we need to do some re-ordering of our lives?
Conclusion
Is it any wonder that these verses conclude with Jesus reminding us that we need to take up our cross and follow him?
The Cross shows us the extent of his love for us, and hence why it puts our fears into context.
The Cross is where not only sin but also shame is dealt with.
The Cross is the price Jesus paid for us all. Does he not deserve to have our first, our highest, and our greatest loyalty?
Big Circumstance 