June 22, 2008
Rev. Patricia L. Liberty
The Stuff of Discipleship
These are challenging words; some of the toughest about the life of discipleship. As we continue our trek through Matthew, there is a relentless invitation to discipleship and a word for the day that is ours to discern.
On a day when we gather with sadness, confusion and heavy hearts as changes unfold in our midst, these are the words that remind us of our purpose as God’s people.
Even though these are words about family members turning on each other and hating each other, it’s important to say that this is not intended to be an anti-family text.
Rather it is a “pro-community of the faithful text”; an eternal reminder that God takes second place to no one and that a vital relationship with God is going to cost us more than everything we value more than God. It is not a call to irresponsibility toward our families, but rather an invitation to explore the very heart of discipleship, to see what’s really on the altar of our lives.
In other words, it’s an invitation to look at our “stuff”. I believe stuff is one of the most important theological words of our time. It describes not only what we possess, but also that which possesses us. It is in those two contexts that we most frequently use the word.
In the physical sense, our stuff is what we possess; our home, our toys, all the trappings of our life. Someone once noted that if you look at your checkbook register, it’s usually a pretty good indicator of where your priorities are. It tells us what stuff is important in our lives. In other places in the Gospels Jesus reminds us that “where your treasure is there will be your heart also.”
In a psychological and spiritual sense, our stuff is what possesses us. In therapy people talk about dealing with their “stuff”. It’s the sum total of the baggage we lug around behind us, stuff that we have picked up from our family of our origin, our relationship history, our greatest joys and most profound sorrows, our deepest hopes and shattered dreams. It includes what we have learned about God that nurtures our lives and all the stuff we should really unlearn because it was either wrong or is no longer helpful. Then there is whatever else life happens to dump into it as we journey through our days. We all have that invisible bag behind us, the only that varies is size and content.
These stark words of Jesus to his disciples were a reminder that if they were going to be the band of believers Jesus needed they were going to have clear decks of their lives put this business of discipleship first and shed the “stuff” that they would normally tote around and depend on the hospitality of strangers.
These were strong words in a time when family, rights of inheritance and succession, marrying well, producing children and strengthening the clan were everything. Jesus confronted the idolatry of the family by suggesting that water was thicker than blood when most people believed and believe just the opposite.
Water is thicker than blood when the water we are talking about is baptismal water. Baptism is one of two sacraments we recognize in the United Church of Christ, the other being the Lord’s Supper. A sacrament, in its simplest definition, is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.
In our tradition baptism has nothing to do with original sin and everything to do with welcoming a child into the family of God
Our UCC book of Worship notes, “Baptism is both God’s gift and our human response to that gift. It is a sign and seal of our common discipleship. Through baptism, Christians are brought into union with Christ, with each other and with the church of every time and place.” (UCC Book of Worship page 129)
It is no small thing when parents bring their child to the waters of baptism. It is no small thing, when as a pastor I gather a child in my arms and make the sign of the cross on the child’s forehead of and baptize in the name of the trinity. It is no small thing when you as members of the congregation pledge your love, support and care to the child and family so that the child will grow in the faith and later affirm his or her baptism through confirmation.
In those moments we affirm the primacy of the baptismal covenant as the foundation of our common discipleship, and the promises we make as parents and as congregation to and on behalf of children are among the most important ones that make in our life.
That’s the heart of Matthew’s Gospel this morning. The writer of Matthew has Jesus saying some pretty tough words to make the point and there is little doubt about what Jesus is driving at here. God is not happy in second place, and it doesn’t matter what or who is in first place.
We spend our entire lives in the dance of discipleship trying to figure out how to have an exclusive dance with God and having the stuff our lives cut in when least expect it. Gratefully God is patient with the dance card of our days and always ready to pick up the waltz where we left off.
There is a final component to the stuff of discipleship and it is more inferred in the passage than stated outright. Or at least it’s a little harder to find after all that language about hating the people that most people think you are supposed to love the most and having everyone hate you back. It’s a wonder anybody signed up to follow.
That final component is community. If water is thicker than blood, as this text suggests, than the community of those who covenant together through baptism comes to the fore as the place where we live out the dance of discipleship. It’s a given in Jesus’ new order for being in the world that having people around to join in the dance is a cornerstone of what makes the whole thing work. The community of the baptized is the new family of God’s realm and it is here that figure out all that it means to be God’s people in our hearts and in the world.
William Sloan Coffin writes, when we join the church we leave home and home town to join a larger world. The whole world is our new neighborhood and all who dwell therein, black white, yellow, red, stuff and starving, smart and stupid, mighty and lowly, criminal and self respecting…all become your sisters and brothers in the new family formed in Jesus. By joining a church you declare your individuality in the most radical way in order to affirm community on the widest possible scale.
People come to church for all kinds of different reasons, spoken and unspoken. Whether you have been here all your life or have stepped in the door for the first time this morning, the reasons we are all here are as different as can be.
If we are honest with ourselves I doubt it is because we have it all together. We are drawn to the church because we are lonely, broken hearted and grieving, empty, on a trek that has taken us far from the nearest beaten path. We are drawn to the church because we have messed up our lives and perhaps some else’s and we are trying to sort it all out. We are all a bit like the Prodigal Son, out there doing our own thing and somehow coming to the realization that always being the lead in the dance of life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
And with all that unspoken stuff of life people hold their breath and walk through the door of the church. I think it is one of the bravest things that people do.
Somewhere in the midst of whatever our personal stuff is that draws us here on any given day, there is also that deep hunger for a different world and the promise of peace and the hope for all the things that lie at the very heart of our faith.
I think it’s one of the reasons this church and every church is packed at Christmas and Easter…beyond tradition of showing up with family and friends there is a that deep hunger to hear the words that soothe the broken places within…
What they don’t’ get is that in order for that to happen they have to show up the rest of the time because the only hope we have moving close to that vision is to join a community of people to encourage the faith journey, because if you have tried it on your own you know it doesn’t work. Truth be told when we are left to our own devices and desires we make a pretty sorry mess of our lives and because now that you see and know and feel the joy of being in a community of faith you can’t imagine living your life in any other way.
We need to be here because there are no easy answers, at least none worth listening to, and asking the hard questions is a valid expression of faith because it helps us live the hard parts of the journey when we leave the security of these walls and head back to a world that for the most part doesn’t care about the church or the gospel even though it desperately needs both.
Being welcomed to a community of faith is about the invitation to join in the community and fellowship of a band of pilgrims who don’t have it all figured out but are on the journey, each with our own stuff, all in that life long process of transformation that makes the image of God’s grace clearer and clearer in our lives.
If someone welcomed you here, now it is up to you to welcome someone else, to invite them to the cost and joy of discipleship, to invite them to the table where your deepest hungers are fed so that theirs may be fed also.
Someone one said Jesus didn’t come to make us Christians, he came to make us human beings. Human beings in the fullest sense of the word, grounded in our identity as children of God, living in intimate relationship with God and with each other in the ways of God. It’s what it means to be created in God’s image; we are created for God’s purpose.
Whatever else may be true about the church as an historic community, as a social community as a place where all kinds of programs can be found. Whatever else may be true about what we do on Sundays, the church IS a ministry, a community gathered for worship and scattered for service. There is no other mandate than to fulfill our ministry.
William Sloan Coffin writes….In Christ’s sight there are no insiders and outsiders, for we are finally of one nature and one flesh and one grief and one hope.