Is loving God before others a cost of discipleship?
This sermon was preached at St Margaret's Church, Whaddon and St George's Church, Tuffley on Sunday 25th June 2017 as part of my placement towards Ordination training.
2nd Sunday after Trinity, Proper 7, Year A Romans 6.1b-11, Matthew 10.24-39.
In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
What, is the cost of being a disciple, a follower of Christ? Today, unless we are in a country where Christians are persecuted, the costs and risks of faith are minimal.
It’s possible the only cost of discipleship we may have experienced, is being unable to express our faith in work or some other public place, but this isn’t life threatening…
For the apostles, they were being prepared for the worst, Jesus was sending them out to proclaim a Gospel of salvation, which challenged the order of both Jewish hierarchy and Roman occupiers.
By doing this they risked being separated from family and loved ones, of being imprisoned or even crucified. Jesus knew that his message may not bring peace, but unrest.
He also knew it was a message he was born to proclaim, one he was baptised for and he needed help, so he was authorising his followers, to proclaim that same message.
And if we fast forward to today, Jesus is still calling us to proclaim his message. Through faith, through baptism, we are called to be faithful, to be heralds for the Kingdom.
Peace is a worthy goal, but a far greater prize is to know Jesus as our saviour. To know we have a place in God’s kingdom. To do this though, means putting God first, which can be challenging.
Here’s another question for you, who, or what, do you love most in the world?
There are all sorts of answers to this question, perhaps your answer would be a member of your family, or perhaps this church, or is it the place you call home, your favourite pub, a drink you like, a football team, a rugby team, an artist, a poet, Coldplay, Ariana Grande, Big Brother, Coronation Street…?
There are many things we all love and we don’t all love the same things. Even if two people love the same person, the way a husband loves a wife, is different to how their child may love their mother and this doesn’t make the love any less powerful or profound.
Where does God fit into this? Well I do have an answer to that, which may or may not surprise you, but first, a true story about a newcomer, training to proclaim the Good News.
This is one of those tales, which, when you hear it, you’ll either think, surely that didn’t happen, or, wow, that was boring…
So, anyway, there was this guy, a child of the 70’s, he just about remembers that long hot summer of ’76. Born on the wrong side of the tracks, well, somewhere close to junction 27 of the M6, he rebelled and by seven was in the church choir.
Then a few years later, a restless urge overtook the family, they upped sticks, he drifted along the highway and, well, they moved with his Dad’s work to Lichfield in Staffordshire. Still rebelling, he joined another church choir, he sang evensong every week. It was the music really, like I say, a real rebel.
By now, he was experimenting, no one could tell how serious it might become, but he got confirmed, he saw Billy Graham at Aston Villa, life outside school was one adventure after another, mostly involving church…
Then he went to college, drifting away from church for a while, to not quite north of the wall, to Middlesbrough, then to Pontypridd in Wales, where the wild things are, which is where he met his wife, Louise.
Who isn’t from Wales but the borders of the black country, the land of the wolf – erhampton. They were married, twenty-one years ago last Thursday and they have a son, James, middle name Alexander, because he’s great.
A few years later, they moved from the Welsh Valley’s to Gloucestershire, following his work. They joined the local church, were welcomed and shown hospitality and gradually became more and more involved in church life.
Faith grew and he knew he was called to serve, but how? was the first step to discern. After a few false starts, he was as surprised as anyone when they said, about a month ago, he could start training to be ordained as a priest.
You would think that through all of this, he would have known a few fundamental truths about what it means to know Jesus as your saviour, but until last autumn there had been something missing, a fundamental missing link…
But what could it be? He met a new pastoral tutor towards the end of last year, while still training to be a Reader, and the tutor perceived in him something to be addressed, simply saying, ‘you do realise, that God loves you, just as you are?”
Expanding on this he said, ‘you need to spend time with God, learn to accept his extravagant, unconditional love for you, then you will be opened up to grace, it’s only if you accept God’s love, that you can then love yourself, re-build your confidence, then learn to love God wholly and absolutely, which will completely renew your love for everyone else around you and everyone you minister to.”
Some of this is paraphrased, but this does fit in to today’s reading. When Jesus is issuing these rather blunt statements about not putting others before him, he isn’t saying that we must abandon our fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, not at all.
When he talks about acknowledging him first, I think that if we change acknowledge to love, this suddenly becomes much more real and personal.
After all, as John wrote in his first letter, “Whoever does not love, does not know God, for God is love.” So, if we acknowledge God, we know God, God is love and so the circle is complete, in knowing God, we already love God. God loves us and so, we go...
It’s important to add that God’s love for us is completely unconditional. Jesus refers to God knowing us completely, down to every hair on our heads, they are all counted and God doesn’t expect us to love him first, before he loves us. He loves us anyway.
In the Gospel today, Jesus is helping us to work out our priorities and some of this was from a need to reassure people who were being oppressed by the Romans or who were working as slaves or on very low wages, so that they could have hope that there was another Lord, other than their masters on Earth.
This love of God and from God, is a risk, this raw compassion opens us up to being vulnerable, and perhaps that is a cost of discipleship.
That in loving, we are open to feeling great joy, to experiencing great sadness and sometimes pain, but also, to knowing the greatest love of all, so that when we do take up our cross to follow him, to love him, he is alongside us, loving us and comforting us as we walk in faith. Carrying the Good News of the Kingdom in our hearts.
2nd Sunday after Trinity, Proper 7, Year A Romans 6.1b-11, Matthew 10.24-39.
In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
What, is the cost of being a disciple, a follower of Christ? Today, unless we are in a country where Christians are persecuted, the costs and risks of faith are minimal.
It’s possible the only cost of discipleship we may have experienced, is being unable to express our faith in work or some other public place, but this isn’t life threatening…
For the apostles, they were being prepared for the worst, Jesus was sending them out to proclaim a Gospel of salvation, which challenged the order of both Jewish hierarchy and Roman occupiers.
By doing this they risked being separated from family and loved ones, of being imprisoned or even crucified. Jesus knew that his message may not bring peace, but unrest.
He also knew it was a message he was born to proclaim, one he was baptised for and he needed help, so he was authorising his followers, to proclaim that same message.
And if we fast forward to today, Jesus is still calling us to proclaim his message. Through faith, through baptism, we are called to be faithful, to be heralds for the Kingdom.
Peace is a worthy goal, but a far greater prize is to know Jesus as our saviour. To know we have a place in God’s kingdom. To do this though, means putting God first, which can be challenging.
Here’s another question for you, who, or what, do you love most in the world?
There are all sorts of answers to this question, perhaps your answer would be a member of your family, or perhaps this church, or is it the place you call home, your favourite pub, a drink you like, a football team, a rugby team, an artist, a poet, Coldplay, Ariana Grande, Big Brother, Coronation Street…?
There are many things we all love and we don’t all love the same things. Even if two people love the same person, the way a husband loves a wife, is different to how their child may love their mother and this doesn’t make the love any less powerful or profound.
Where does God fit into this? Well I do have an answer to that, which may or may not surprise you, but first, a true story about a newcomer, training to proclaim the Good News.
This is one of those tales, which, when you hear it, you’ll either think, surely that didn’t happen, or, wow, that was boring…
So, anyway, there was this guy, a child of the 70’s, he just about remembers that long hot summer of ’76. Born on the wrong side of the tracks, well, somewhere close to junction 27 of the M6, he rebelled and by seven was in the church choir.
Then a few years later, a restless urge overtook the family, they upped sticks, he drifted along the highway and, well, they moved with his Dad’s work to Lichfield in Staffordshire. Still rebelling, he joined another church choir, he sang evensong every week. It was the music really, like I say, a real rebel.
By now, he was experimenting, no one could tell how serious it might become, but he got confirmed, he saw Billy Graham at Aston Villa, life outside school was one adventure after another, mostly involving church…
Then he went to college, drifting away from church for a while, to not quite north of the wall, to Middlesbrough, then to Pontypridd in Wales, where the wild things are, which is where he met his wife, Louise.
Who isn’t from Wales but the borders of the black country, the land of the wolf – erhampton. They were married, twenty-one years ago last Thursday and they have a son, James, middle name Alexander, because he’s great.
A few years later, they moved from the Welsh Valley’s to Gloucestershire, following his work. They joined the local church, were welcomed and shown hospitality and gradually became more and more involved in church life.
Faith grew and he knew he was called to serve, but how? was the first step to discern. After a few false starts, he was as surprised as anyone when they said, about a month ago, he could start training to be ordained as a priest.
You would think that through all of this, he would have known a few fundamental truths about what it means to know Jesus as your saviour, but until last autumn there had been something missing, a fundamental missing link…
But what could it be? He met a new pastoral tutor towards the end of last year, while still training to be a Reader, and the tutor perceived in him something to be addressed, simply saying, ‘you do realise, that God loves you, just as you are?”
Expanding on this he said, ‘you need to spend time with God, learn to accept his extravagant, unconditional love for you, then you will be opened up to grace, it’s only if you accept God’s love, that you can then love yourself, re-build your confidence, then learn to love God wholly and absolutely, which will completely renew your love for everyone else around you and everyone you minister to.”
Some of this is paraphrased, but this does fit in to today’s reading. When Jesus is issuing these rather blunt statements about not putting others before him, he isn’t saying that we must abandon our fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, not at all.
When he talks about acknowledging him first, I think that if we change acknowledge to love, this suddenly becomes much more real and personal.
After all, as John wrote in his first letter, “Whoever does not love, does not know God, for God is love.” So, if we acknowledge God, we know God, God is love and so the circle is complete, in knowing God, we already love God. God loves us and so, we go...
It’s important to add that God’s love for us is completely unconditional. Jesus refers to God knowing us completely, down to every hair on our heads, they are all counted and God doesn’t expect us to love him first, before he loves us. He loves us anyway.
In the Gospel today, Jesus is helping us to work out our priorities and some of this was from a need to reassure people who were being oppressed by the Romans or who were working as slaves or on very low wages, so that they could have hope that there was another Lord, other than their masters on Earth.
This love of God and from God, is a risk, this raw compassion opens us up to being vulnerable, and perhaps that is a cost of discipleship.
That in loving, we are open to feeling great joy, to experiencing great sadness and sometimes pain, but also, to knowing the greatest love of all, so that when we do take up our cross to follow him, to love him, he is alongside us, loving us and comforting us as we walk in faith. Carrying the Good News of the Kingdom in our hearts.
Amen
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