Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from the Gospel of Matthew, the tenth chapter:
“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 a person’s enemies will be those of his 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 his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.“
Thus far the text.
Dear friends in Christ,
In the country of Madagascar, not far off the coast of the continent of Africa, the Lutheran church is growing by leaps and bounds. The church there began all the way back in the 1800s when the Norwegian Mission Society went down and began their missions there. Many congregations are small; most are huge, worshipping in the thousands, and one congregation even having 3000-9000 people attending on a Sunday; the vast majority of congregations are in step with the Book of Concord, just like many of the congregations of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. They use the hymnal, they use the liturgies that we use each week, they read the same Scriptures.
This denomination is one of, if not, the fastest growing Lutheran denominations in the world. They open a new congregation each week to keep supporting its over 4 million members in one of the poorest countries in the world. But, Satan is strong in this country, despite the efforts of the Gospel.
Dr. Robert Bennett, a pastor in the LCMS, spent much time in Madagascar and discovered that the natural religion of the place is a kind of animism, where most things in the world have some type of soul, including the rocks, the grass, etc. But there is also a high belief in the spirits of those who have passed, and so with that comes a theology that exists of ancestor worship, ghosts, and the like. What he saw there was so shocking to his North American Lutheran experience, it was difficult to understand at first.
He saw exorcisms, he saw demon possessions, he saw inexplicable things happening all around him. He saw the work of demons that we don’t usually see here in America. That’s not surprising. We don’t really believe in demons anymore here, though, I can tell you, they are quite real and very active. What was surprising to Bennett was that the people with whom he was worshipping, those Lutherans in Madagascar, they were being rejected by everyone they loved.
You see, in Madagascar, when you are turned to Christ, when you are turned to His sacrifice for you for the forgiveness of your sins, when you are turned toward the eternal life Jesus won for you in His resurrection, you turn away from all the evil that exists within the religions of the ancestors. You turn away from ancestor worship, you turn away from asking the demonic ghosts for favors, you turn away, in essence, from your family. And when this happens, you are cast out.
It’s not as if these people are asking to be kicked out of their families. It’s not as if these new Christians don’t want anything to do with their families. Very much the opposite. In fact, who is that wants to be kicked out? And, if you are a new Christian, given the hope of the Resurrection, given over to Jesus in the waters of baptism, wouldn’t you want your entire family to be converted in the same way? Of course you would. I know all of us here are concerned for others in that very same way.
These new Christians want to be a part of their family so that they may witness to the Truth of Jesus Christ. Yet, they are shunned, rejected, kicked out, persecuted, beaten, shamed, and they continue to persevere in the very Word of Christ. The end result of the wonderful washing they receive in their baptisms is that these new Christians end up turning, not away from Christ, but away from their families, for their own families have rejected them, they refuse to love those Christians, and in this, the Christians find a new family at the altar of the Lord’s Supper as they celebrate the love feast of Christ.
I tell you all that to tell you this: this is what Jesus is talking about in our Gospel lesson this morning. It’s so easy for us to rip these verses out of context and hear, “You must love Jesus more than your wife, more than your son, more than your daughter, more than your husband, more than anything else in the world, and if you don’t, or if you mess up, you’re going straight to hell.” It’s easy for us to then respond with doubt and fear, “Do I love you, Jesus, more than any of my family? What if I love my wife more today, and then I love you more tomorrow? Is that fair?” Or what about the people who rip this verse, not just out of context, but out of all semblance of reality and sanity and make Jesus their boyfriend? “I love Jesus so much, I want Him to hold hands with me, stroke my hair, sing me love songs, hold me when I’m feeling sad…” It’s kinda sick.
And so, it would be easy for us to despair in these things, for we have to admit the truth: we often feel love for our families more than we feel love for Christ. And I’m not saying that’s right, I’m just saying that’s the way it is.
But that’s not really what Jesus is saying here. Instead, Jesus tells us that because we follow Him, because we do indeed have love for Him, not because He’s our boyfriend, but because He is our Savior from our sins, others will reject us.
In the Jewish culture of the day, this would have made immediate sense to those whom Jesus was talking. There, you would have heard Jesus’ statements of one’s father, mother, mother-in-law and known immediately that Jesus was talking about those who have authority over you. Fathers have supreme authority over sons, mothers over daughters, mothers-in-law over their daughters-in-law. This has been lost to some extent today. After all, my own mother doesn’t boss my wife around, nor does my father me. Instead, in America, we are autonomous, we live on our own, we do our own thing, and we rarely do things that would cause us to be separated out from the mess that can be our families. But in Israel, and Madagascar, this isn’t the case. The family is a unit. Those who are named together, stay together, and you better not break it.
So, Jesus is talking about authority here, and in this way Jesus is talking to those sons who are Christians who have fathers who are not, daughters who are who have mothers who are not. And when that’s the case, the unbelieving father could and probably would command the son to give up faith in Christ. If he didn’t, the father might beat him, punish him, or disown him. And so it is. For this has happened countless times over the centuries. And the sons, the daughters, the daughters-in-law left the family; they left all comfort behind for the sake of Christ.
For these, they could starve, beg, be shelterless, for all was taken away from them. They lose their life, they left their lives in this world behind, all for the sake of Christ. They loved Christ more than their family, for they realized that, in this world, in this sinful world, we must obey God rather than men, even if that means that, for the sake of Christ, our families forsake us.
You see, sometimes we want to read these passages and look at Jesus’ words about Him bringing a sword and not peace and think, “Well, perhaps, then I just better be all on fire for Jesus, making sure to tell them that God hates their godlessness.” Well, that’s how the folks down at the Westboro Baptist Church interpret that. You know them, they’re the ones with the ridiculous signs who protest everything from a Brad Paisley concert to the funerals of American Service men and women. Do you really think that’s the idea that Jesus had here?
No. Rather, the sword that Jesus brings is the sword that will indeed divide families, but not because the Christian strikes first. Rather, the sword of Christ is violent indeed, but not because it is wielded by the Christian, but by the hand of God. It’s a sword of judgment, but not judgment by the Christian, but by Christ Himself. And this sword is even wielded against Christ at the cross, where He took the punishment for our sin, and this sword is wielded, dividing Christians from non-Christians. It divides families because an unbelieving family will indeed reject a believing person.
You see, this is all about persecution. It is all about living free in Christ. The Christian will be rejected by the family that disbelieves Christ because the Christian will not allow the things of this world to corrupt his own soul, his own hope, his own trust in Christ. This is why I told you of Madagascar. For there, the Christian no longer worships his ancestors, no longer sees souls in the material things, no longer seeks to worship the demons masquerading as angels of light or, even worse, family members long-deceased.
And because of that, these blessed Christians are turned out of their families. The sword of Christ has come down between them. Christ has divided them, not because Jesus joys in breaking up the family, but because Jesus joys in keeping His little ones safe and secure. Do you remember the saying of Jesus, “…a little leaven leavens the whole lump?” Here Jesus is talking of false doctrine and practice. When we allow false doctrines and false practices come into our thoughts, and we all do this, and we all need to stop this, these things have a tendency to take over.
Think of a snake bite. When a venomous snake bites you at the ankle, what happens? The poison courses through your blood until it gets to the heart, unless… Unless you tourniquet the leg above the bite, or unless you cut of the appendage that was bitten.
You see, the sword of Christ cuts off the appendage that will poison you to death. The sword of Christ cuts off the part of the bread that has the yeast in it before it gets into the whole lump. The sword of Christ cuts off the family, the friends, the false doctrine, the false practice that will infect you, fester, and cause you to die eternally because you have rejected Christ.
But, how do you know this is true? After all, don’t we love our family members more than Jesus? Don’t we sometimes listen to false things? Don’t we enjoy the sins of this world more than we enjoy our family in this place? We do.
But Christ has given to you gifts which bring you back from these places. Christ has given to you His Word, so that you might know what is right and wrong according to Law, as Paul said today in our reading from Romans. This Word does not just convict you, however. It guides you into all Truth, and will continually point us sinners towards the good news of the Gospel, that Christ, the Son of God, came to this earth to live, die, be resurrected, and ascend on high all for us.
And Christ has given to you the washing of regeneration, in which you have received the gift of the Holy Spirit. He has given to you, your baptism. Here you received faith, faith which receives all the gifts of God, and faith that receives the Word of God, particularly, the Word that Jesus is “for you.”
And Christ has given to you His forgiveness, for when the pastor speaks the absolution, He speaks on behalf of Christ, with the voice of Christ, and so you may know that it is Christ Himself who forgives you, not counting any of your sins against you, even those sins of loving others, making them idols, more than you love God.
And Christ continues to give us His Sacrament, the Supper, where we see how much Jesus loves us, that He has found us worthy of Him, so worthy by His declaration, in fact, that He condescends to us to reside within us. He comes down in such a way as to actually enter our bodies in His body and blood.
You see, dear Christian, in Christ’s name, we are His. He has declared us worthy, whether we fight against this world and the unbelieving masses strongly or weakly. Perhaps others, like in Madagascar, fight more strongly than we are able, but for us both, we receive the same gifts from God. Perhaps others suffer more, but we receive the same gifts from God. Perhaps others do more in the name of Jesus, but we receive the same gifts from God. Perhaps we don’t struggle against this world and all of its false beliefs like we truly should, but we all receive the same gifts from God.
We pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ in Madagascar, and around the world, as they face persecutions in the name of Christ, persecutions we cannot even imagine. But we pray for us as well, that, if necessary, we endure under the same, but moreover, that the gifts of Christ that He has bestowed on His Church across space and time would preserve us so that we might find that eternal life that was promised in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. And so we shall, for Christ wields the sword to protect you. You are His, now and always. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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